THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL MODEL

The Partnership for the Future of Learning's Community Schools Playbook  defines community schools as "public schools that partner with families and community organizations to provide well-rounded educational opportunities and supports for students’ school success." The authors recognize that, "because each community school is a reflection of local needs, assets, and priorities, no two look exactly alike." However, four pillars are listed as essential to the community school model:

1. Integrated student supports

2. Expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities

3. Active family and community engagement

4. Collaborative leadership and practices

Through these four pillars, community schools strive to provide students with "the resources, opportunities, and supports that make academic success possible and create strong ties among families, students, schools, and communities," regardless of the district's level of funding.

Critically, the Community Schools Playbook is explicitly framed as a tool for equity and justice. Its use as part of a grander vision of a more just and fair society is described as follows:

We focus here on community schools as a core element of an equity strategy. All children and families benefit from access to resources, opportunities, and supports to advance learning and healthy development. Community schools can address systemic barriers that limit opportunities for students and families—often based on race and class—ensuring fair access to the supports that will prepare students for future success. By tapping into a community’s assets and culture—from nonprofits to museums to businesses—community schools bring powerful learning opportunities to schools that are under-resourced, and which may have narrowed the curriculum in response to fiscal constraints and testing pressures. In doing so, they help reduce the achievement gap—the inequalities in students’ performance on test scores, grades, and other observable school outcomes that result in part from a lack of access. (p. 5)

According to Loyola University School Partners, these ideas come from "social reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who saw schools as the ideal place for these social centers...[and] believed that schools should be the center of a community, providing beneficial social services and serving as a place for intra-community dialogue." These schools become coalition-builders, serving as a focal point where various community players could come together to talk and share ideas.

Through this model, community schools act as a “third place”—a space for interaction with others outside the home and place of work. In her article, "Theorizing Critical Placemaking as a Tool for Reclaiming Public Space," Erin Toolis writes that “our thoughts, identities, and interactions shape and are shaped by these locations of everyday collective meaning making” where people can associate freely, and that public spaces such as community schools “offer a common ground for individuals from diverse backgrounds to intersect and engage with one another,” a process known to enhance social capital and improve psychological well-being (p. 2).

The school benefits from this arrangement as well, “as the staff gain access to new and important funds of knowledge that can support teaching and learning efforts and deepen engagement and community-building efforts…the school system, for its part, gains important advocates, such as for deeper investments, as families and community members understand and support strategic goals and see themselves as vital partners in schools’ success” (Partnership for the Future of Learning, p. 50).