schools and buses on earth vector illustration
Community Schools:
Addressing the whole child one step at a time
by Alisha Kirby
In 2005, a single mom of five in Lake County escaped an abusive partner and, with nowhere else to go, began living in her van with her young children. The family’s prospects looked bleak, but, bit by bit, intervention from Lake County Office of Education officials helped to turn things around.
Through the county’s community school Healthy Start program, the mother connected with local services and organizations that helped her to meet her and the children’s basic needs: clothing, food and housing assistance. The children were enrolled in school and began to thrive with academic support.

While that scenario may sound like education officials going above and beyond the call of duty, in community schools throughout the state, addressing the needs of the whole child and their family is common or expected.

Community
Schools

were established in California following the passage of the Healthy Start grant program in 1991. The goal was to bring schools, families, neighborhoods, and public and private agencies together to better meet student and family needs both in and outside of the school day. The need to address the effects of housing and economic instability on families has only grown since the program began.

About 15 million children in the United States — 21 percent of all children — live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2016, that was just $24,339 for a family of four. During the 2016–17 school year, more than 1.3 million students were identified as homeless by state educational agencies, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Homeless Education. The real number is likely to be higher, however, as that total only includes students enrolled in public schools, and does not capture school-aged children who experience homelessness during the summer, those who dropped out of school or toddlers not enrolled in district preschool programs.

Living in poverty or experiencing homelessness have long been linked to poor mental and physical health outcomes among youth, as well as myriad resulting academic challenges.

“It’s no longer in question that a child’s physical and mental health, housing stability or lack thereof, hunger, trauma and other factors impact a student’s ability to learn in the classroom,” said Jennifer Peck, president and CEO of The Partnership for Children & Youth — a Bay Area advocacy organization that promotes high-quality learning opportunities for underserved youth. “These challenges are so severe for some students that it’s a struggle to attend school consistently, let alone be present and able to engage with the instructional day. While districts aren’t necessarily resourced or prepared to tackle all these factors, they clearly have no choice but to tackle them if they have any chance of achieving the academic goals they set for their student body, and to do it in any kind of equitable way.”

Community
Schools
were established in California following the passage of the Healthy Start grant program in 1991. The goal was to bring schools, families, neighborhoods, and public and private agencies together to better meet student and family needs both in and outside of the school day. The need to address the effects of housing and economic instability on families has only grown since the program began.

About 15 million children in the United States — 21 percent of all children — live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2016, that was just $24,339 for a family of four. During the 2016–17 school year, more than 1.3 million students were identified as homeless by state educational agencies, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Homeless Education. The real number is likely to be higher, however, as that total only includes students enrolled in public schools, and does not capture school-aged children who experience homelessness during the summer, those who dropped out of school or toddlers not enrolled in district preschool programs.

Living in poverty or experiencing homelessness have long been linked to poor mental and physical health outcomes among youth, as well as myriad resulting academic challenges.

“It’s no longer in question that a child’s physical and mental health, housing stability or lack thereof, hunger, trauma and other factors impact a student’s ability to learn in the classroom,” said Jennifer Peck, president and CEO of The Partnership for Children & Youth — a Bay Area advocacy organization that promotes high-quality learning opportunities for underserved youth. “These challenges are so severe for some students that it’s a struggle to attend school consistently, let alone be present and able to engage with the instructional day. While districts aren’t necessarily resourced or prepared to tackle all these factors, they clearly have no choice but to tackle them if they have any chance of achieving the academic goals they set for their student body, and to do it in any kind of equitable way.”

What are community schools?
To mitigate the many challenges students may face outside school walls that negatively impact their education, local educational agencies throughout the country have established community schools in some of their neediest areas.

Often confused with community schools are school-based health clinics, which provide much-needed medical and dental care, as well as mental or behavioral health care through on- and off-campus sites or in mobile vans. The recent school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic showed how vital these services are in resource-starved communities. According to one California School-Based Health Alliance estimate, at least 60 percent of school-based health clinics available to roughly 300,000 students around the state were closed this past school year. Many community schools were also forced to shut their doors in order to keep students, families and staff safe from the spread of the novel coronavirus.

family graph showing 21% of all children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level
21%

of all children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

person sleeping vector illustration
1.3 million

students were identified as homeless by state educational agencies during the 2016–17 school year, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.

A community school differs from a more traditional school — even those that provide some additional health-related services — in that it combines academics with a wide range of vital in-house services, supports and opportunities that are integral to promoting learning and overall development. There, partnerships between the schools and local organizations, nonprofits and county offices, among others, are a necessity to ensure children and their families have access to comprehensive resources that education officials alone can’t realistically provide.

Because each community school’s operations and offerings reflect local needs, assets and priorities, no two are identical, according to authors of the Community Schools Playbook, a resource developed by the Partnership For The Future of Learning network. There are commonalities, however. Many community schools stay open year-round, from sunup to sundown, and on weekends. Comprehensive community schools act as both academic and social centers where educators, families and community members gather to support innovative learning and alleviate the impact of out-of-school societal factors on education.

Through strong partnerships, community schools can offer the supports that children and their families need to succeed — and might not be receiving otherwise. On-site health clinics can deliver physical and mental health treatment, as well as dental care, vision tests and glasses to children and inhalers for asthma sufferers. Successful community schools also engage families in their child’s education and tend to offer family support, too, such as preparation courses for GED or citizenship exams, English language acquisition classes, or other targeted skill-development opportunities.

In a review of findings from 143 rigorous studies on the impact of community schools on student outcomes, researchers from the Learning Policy Institute and the National Education Policy Center found that the schools can help mitigate out-of-school barriers and reduce gaps in both opportunity and achievement. “Community Schools as an Effective School Improvement Strategy: A Review of the Evidence” concluded that combining integrated student supports, expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities, and strong family and community engagement boosted academic achievement.

“It’s no longer in question that a child’s physical and mental health, housing stability or lack thereof, hunger, trauma and other factors impact a student’s ability to learn in the classroom.”
‑Jennifer Peck, president and CEO, The Partnership for Children & Youth
“It’s no longer in question that a child’s physical and mental health, housing stability or lack thereof, hunger, trauma and other factors impact a student’s ability to learn in the classroom.”
‑Jennifer Peck, president and CEO, The Partnership for Children & Youth
hands with heart vector illustration
Community schools can offer the supports that children and their families might not receive otherwise.
On-site health clinics can deliver physical and mental health treatment, as well as dental care, vision tests and glasses to children and inhalers for asthma sufferers. Successful community schools also engage families in their child’s education and tend to offer family support, too, such as preparation courses for GED or citizenship exams, English language acquisition classes, or other targeted skill-development opportunities.
One of the foundational aspects of the community schools model is the sense of school connectedness that children experience, and the trust developed among families, teachers, school officials and students. By focusing on family engagement, community schools not only continue to tailor the supports and resources they offer, but also ensure that student gains in the classroom continue, said Deanna Niebuhr, California policy and program director for the Berkeley-based Opportunity Institute.

“We need to help move the needle on family engagement and what engagement looks like,” Niebuhr said. Through her work with community schools throughout the state, she has seen that without a strong support system in place for families and meaningful engagement, the positive academic benefits gained in community schools tend to be short lived. “That kind of engagement moves academic achievement in a way that outlasts what we’ve seen when schools only offer additional supports and services.”

Family engagement at work
Redwood City School District — a 1995 recipient of the now-defunct Healthy Start grant program — has continued to grow its community schools program. Five out of 12 schools in the Bay Area district are now community schools, according to district community schools Director Pati Ortiz.

As the program grew from its initial pilot and more effort was put into family engagement, community members began more actively participating with their local schools, said Alisa Greene MacAvoy, Redwood City SD board vice president and CSBA Region 5 Director. Parents are increasingly attending various on-campus events and adult education courses, which have shifted along with community demographics. For instance, the district’s community schools now offer language classes to parents learning English, which MacAvoy said provides opportunities for community integration and can lead to additional job opportunities.

And with that boost in parent engagement comes even more positive outcomes for students, MacAvoy said. “At our community schools, we see high levels of family engagement. The other thing is that we’ll see higher levels of attendance, and we know that absenteeism rates are directly related to academics,” she said. “It’s really important to have parents and guardians engaged in [their child’s] education and understand how they can support their students.”

There is no shortage of nonprofit organizations or foundations in the Bay Area eager to help improve social and economic mobility among historically disadvantaged communities. So why should districts and county offices of education bother stepping in at all and use their already limited resources to do the work provided in community schools?

Access.

“Schools are the place that kids naturally occupy and when you have a working mom with two jobs and commuting with public transportation, even if you have great partners, even if (services) are free, she can’t really support her kids with tutoring and counseling, et cetera, all across town,” Ortiz said. “So the idea of bringing all these services on site and creating that accessibility — it takes a village to raise a kid.”

Establishing trusting relationships at all levels of the school community is key, Ortiz added. Parents must believe that teachers, school staff and administrators have their child’s best interest at heart and are advocating on behalf of their family. Once the trust is there and parents feel comfortable being vulnerable, they’ll share the challenges they are facing, and the school can better target interventions.

“That kind of engagement moves academic achievement in a way that outlasts what we’ve seen when schools only offer additional supports and services.”
—Deanna Niebuhr, California policy and program director, Opportunity Institute
The ability to deliver comprehensive support systems is made possible by the organizations included in the Redwood City 2020 partnership, through which participating groups pool their financial resources and offer their own expertise. The coalition includes local food banks, the Boys and Girls Club, Kaiser Permanente, and city and county health and human service agencies.

To Ortiz, despite the challenges that come with operating community schools, helping to uplift families and provide the resources that students need to thrive at the place they already spend the majority of their time is the only thing that makes sense. “The trauma, the instability, the stress is there in your face every single day with every single child, so you can’t ignore it. You have to address it,” Ortiz said. “There’s just no way out of it. The problems are there, so might as well tackle them in the most efficient and effective way.”

More support needed for community schools
Because of the well-documented benefits associated with community schools, Gov. Gavin Newsom had included $300 million in one-time Proposition 98 funding in his 2020–21 January budget proposal to jump-start the creation of community schools in some of California’s most impoverished, struggling schools and districts. Due to the COVID-19 crisis’ crippling blow to the state’s economy, however, all proposed funding for new programs was redirected to a “workload budget” to maintain spending on current programs and services.

While additional funding would have been welcomed, many had questioned if Gov. Newsom’s one-time funding proposal was enough to both establish and continue to operate community schools. Still, LEAs have long been tasked with doing more with less. Trustee MacAvoy of Redwood City SD noted that while the initial seed money her district received was necessary to start the process, the district now relies on other funding streams and the financial resources of those involved in the Redwood City 2020 partnership to cover facilities costs and pay its community schools coordinator.

The district also relies on supplemental and concentration grants provided under California’s Local Control Funding Formula for low-income and foster youth, as well as English learners. “I would say most communities who might be looking at community schools probably are getting supplemental LCFF funds, and maybe also concentrated because many would have the 55 percent [unduplicated pupils]. So that’s a really good funding source, and it seems to be directly related to helping the students that LCFF was meant to help,” MacAvoy said.

When it comes to financing community schools, the ability to leverage resources outside of the school system is important, said Peck of The Partnership for Children & Youth. What education officials need more than anything when it comes to developing community schools is technical support, she said.

“If more functional, effective community schools are going to happen in California, it’s critical that we invest not only in local coordination, but also technical assistance,” Peck said. “Community schools planning and implementation isn’t easy, and districts will need help identifying the right resources and partners, and facilitation of partners coming together to figure out how to better leverage resources across local systems. They will need ideas and examples from other districts that look like them and they will need concrete guidance on how a community schools strategy supports their LCAP goals.”

Ned Resnikoff, a K-12 fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office, has examined how community schools throughout the country deal with the additional costs they incur on top of funding for traditional public education activities. Most rely on a combination of state and federal grants, in-kind services from county and city agencies with which they partner, as well as nonprofit and philanthropic funding, he said.

As the budget process moved forward prior to the pandemic, Resnikoff said the LAO would have liked to have seen a greater emphasis on the technical assistance component. Through that approach, schools could receive the support they need to convert to the community schools model in accordance with best practices and develop the infrastructure they would need to find sustainable funding streams on their own.

“Given how important it is to access nonprofit and philanthropic funds in order to keep these community schools sustainable, it might be much harder to do in areas where there isn’t already a large nonprofit sector.”
—Ned Resnikoff, K-12 fiscal and policy analyst, Legislative Analyst’s Office
“A traditional school is not really set up to fundraise for itself,” Resnikoff said. “Another part of that concern also is that, given how important it is to access nonprofit and philanthropic funds in order to keep these community schools sustainable, it might be much harder to do in areas where there isn’t already a large nonprofit sector. Some rural areas might have a harder time establishing a community school than a district in the Bay Area where there are a lot of foundations and nonprofits that are equipped to assist in that work.”
Rural regions have more need than resources
The Lake County Office of Education community schools program began with Healthy Start funding in 1994 and has continued through a variety of piecemeal grants that allow the rural LEA to offer a comprehensive list of resources. Much like Redwood City SD located about 130 miles south, community schools in Lake County offer oral and medical health services, and assistance for foster and homeless youth. There are adult education opportunities and child abuse prevention courses for parents, as well as housing assistance and other supports.

The differences between the two LEAs — the space between school sites and the lack of local nonprofits and other organizations in the Lake County region, for instance — present obstacles for families in Lake County that those in Redwood City don’t have. Staff can only offer certain services at one or two campuses or cover just a couple days a week for a few hours at different school sites, said Ana Santana, program director for Healthy Start Youth and Family Services at the Lake County Office of Education.

“That’s a big hurdle because there’s need everywhere. It feels that there’s an equity issue because we can’t service everybody the same way. Every year, there’s more need,” Santana said. “But we have to do what we can with what we have. I think in Lake County, our biggest resource that we have is not money, but the love and the compassion and the caring from people in service agencies that are able to connect with our community members.”

Despite the challenges that arise when running community schools, Santana said they are a vital part of the county’s goal to educate the whole child. If children aren’t safe, or are coming to school hungry, they’re not going to be able to learn to read or write, she said. Education includes “teaching about the importance of social-emotional competency. Children are more than test scores,” Santana said.

Additionally, each intervention and every support provided to students and their families can drastically improve individual lives and, ultimately, benefit the community overall.

For the Lake County mother and her five children, the help they received 15 years ago helped them get their lives on track. One of the children is in high school, and the rest have graduated, Santana said. Some are attending college, one is working as a mechanic, and they all now have families of their own.

“I ran into them the other day at one of the school events and they’re doing amazing, and [mom] has her own home now,” Santana said. “It’s not a big thing, but it’s hers. And her kids all made it. The kids didn’t get lost in the foster care system or end up in the prison system. That, to me, is a huge success.”


Alisha Kirby is a staff writer for California Schools.