U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has warned of an ominous "New Normal" for public schools. This era of sky-high deficits and fiscal austerity for states and school districts threatens our ability to achieve better outcomes for all students, particularly the most vulnerable. That leaves us no choice but to work together and spend smarter.
Enter community schools. Built around the notion that education is a shared responsibility, community schools draw on the expertise and capacity of many local institutions, including universities, nonprofits, and government agencies to coordinate diverse services under one schoolhouse roof. When a school is a community hub, students and families can easily access healthcare, academic enrichment, social services and a range of supports that strengthen kids, parents, and neighborhoods.
Just as critically in this economy, community schools efficiently combine scarce school, local, public, and private funds to maximize the benefit to children and families. By marshaling complementary services, community schools eliminate waste and bureaucratic barriers to leverage a variety of funding streams and human talent. These multi-tasking campuses provide more comprehensive help to families than any one school or organization alone could. Working across boundaries educates the "whole child" and serves the whole family, which in turn, strengthens the whole community.
I saw this vision in action during a visit to the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) community schools in Multnomah County, Oregon. This initiative links the county, the city of Portland, and six school districts to provide a range of supports for students that will help them to succeed. Thanks to sustained investments by the county, city and school districts, with strong local leadership, and support from existing health, higher education, youth development and other agencies resources, SUN Community Schools have grown from eight in 2001, to 60 schools today.
A coordinator at each school, hired by a lead community-based agency, strategically leverages the services and expertise of local nonprofits and other organizations in an intentional way that supports the school's core mission and addresses the myriad of challenges low-income children face.
The 4-H leader at Earl Boyles Elementary, a SUN community school, is funded from a juvenile justice grant, to help mentor at-risk youngsters. He was grateful for the community schools structure, which eliminates logistical hassles of coordinating with administrators, and allows him to focus on his real goal: reaching kids. Meanwhile, AmeriCorps volunteers engage families, a local charity provides summertime meals for parents and kids, and a gardening group helps students plant and care for a community plot. Teachers connect the work students do in the community garden with classroom learning: one child presented a class report on eggplants; part of the school garden's harvest.
Last school year, Earl Boyles Elementary partnered with 28 community agencies and businesses, resulting in nearly $30,000 in cash and in-kind donations, and nearly 200 hours of volunteer service. With so much community support -- and offerings ranging from chess club to youth service learning to financial literacy for adults -- Boyles students have boosted reading and math scores, and teachers report better attendance, homework completion, and participation.
Another SUN school, Woodmere Elementary, helps prepare the youngest children -- many with no preschool or Head Start experience -- for kindergarten through a special three-week program. Parents can take English, nutrition, and computer classes. Woodmere's 29 community and business partners offered direct services, generated nearly $69,000 in cash and in-kind donations, and volunteers contributed 670 hours of service last school year.
This multi-layered approach is made possible through money from Multnomah County, the city of Portland, school districts, state and federal grants, Title I funds, the resources of local partners, and the essential donation of supplies, and volunteer hours from groups such as the PTA, Portland State University, and Reed College.
Joining forces stretches limited dollars: A recent report by the Coalition for Community Schools found that every dollar invested in a community school generates 'three dollars' worth of services and opportunities for children and families. And that's a conservative estimate. When Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, he advocated for community schools, estimating that they capture even more value.
In the midst of Duncan's "New Normal," community schools make more sense than ever. Many different services and opportunities exist in communities -- but, a coherent and collaborative strategy for organizing them is missing. By uniting social and health services, enrichment, youth development, tutoring, adult education, and other opportunities under one roof, schools and communities save time and energy, and most critically, use their money in a smarter way.
Times are tough; today's children arrive at school with complicated challenges. Solving them demands that we work together toward a smarter solution that is both effective and cost-effective. That's just what community schools do.
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It used to be we had parents and priests/pastors/imams/rabbis, PTAs, and communities in general doing much of the job we're being asked to do now with fewer of the essential resources than we had then.
I spend my own money on individual students' needs because their parents can't or won't and the district rarely returns the money.
I spend more time helping young high school students understand what being a student is - being a self-directed lifelong learner - and becoming stable young adults than I do teaching my subject because it is the "new normal".
The "new normal" is that despite all that, I am seeing my pay vs cost of living slowly shrink and the press and politicians and the corporate world suggest they've got a better way to do my job than I do.
Few are willing to accept the simple truth: We've got a deep American culture problem. We've lost our way. We need to address the growing disparity between rich and poor and we need to address how the community is raising the children.
I don't disagree that all of the above needs to be done in order for kids to learn; I just can't help feeling that it's unfair for it all to be the school's responsibility. And I don't see how adding to the list is a solution to a budget crisis. What I see (as a certified teacher working as a sub all over Multnomah Cty., including in some of the schools named in the article) is SUN school displacing classrooms out to portables, Americorps volunteers working out of closets, and community gardens taking away playground space for the kids. I love all these ideas in theory, but in practice they're not adequately supported, and take resources away from the reason school is there.
While a handful of students can succeed via the athletics route, the academic route is far more open to students - many if not most of the students who pursue the academic route with discipline and energy will build a reasonable life-long career. Very few of the student athletes will make it to the majors, much less last more than a few years if they do make it.
the younger students walking around with there heads down focused on their blackberrys, and
concerned more about their tweets then their education.
How many corporations used computers to do accounting as among the first things they did in the 50s and 60s? But now with cheap computers we are supposed to do social networking.
Most likely nobody sees a way to make a lot of money on truly making the best use of computers for education. It was demonstrated in 1987 that computers did a better job than lots of teachers. Vero Beach High School. Florida. No info on what computers and software they used though.
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/500/421
How is it that the entire economics profession can just FORGET to talk about how much Americans lose on the depreciation of automobiles every year? What kind of EDUCATION did they get? But when Americans bought more cars the purchases were added to the GROSS Domestic Product but some how the economists failed to mention the NET Domestic Product for decades.
Who decides what SMART education is? Who decides what to do with these computers? The schools can't even point out that they are all von Neumann machines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dg96tefnEU
We have the problem of deciding how to use this technology but do the people running the schools want to question traditional paradigms which may now be obsolete? What has kept them from suggesting a National Reading List for decades? Is it because schooling is really about controlling the distribution of knowledge?
The Fourth R by George O. Smith
http://www.goodreads.com/reader/read/1660?percent=0.804073
No. GDP is now larger than then. There is *no* shortage of money. Don't believe me, look at the graph in this chart: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/20/bush-tax-cuts-debt_n_864812.html
If we only spent on our military 300% of what the Chinese, our nearest military rival, spend, then there would be Federal budget surpluses as far as the eye can see.
Don't forget, we're incarcerating five times the world average (752 per 100,000). Canada, with similar demographics, and insignificantly different crime incarcerates only 111 per 100,000.
In other words, we'd apparently spend our blood and treasure suppressing people, foreign and domestic. My question: who tortured the population into believing that?
Meanwhile, this article looks like the same magical thinking that leads people to believe some super-heroic teacher will somehow save our bacon and our kids bacon if only we had merit pay! (or charter schools, or testing until the students' eyeballs were rolling around on the floor). If only we had celebrity teachers (Tony Danza!!!!).
See http://notwaitingforsuperman.com/, especially http://www.vimeo.com/18900900