What Happens When the Level of Engagement Changes? Community Schools and Broad-Based Community Partners

• In Event: Community Schools Across Cities: At the Intersections of Inequity, Power, and Radical Possibilities

Abstract

Community schools have been developed in a variety of different ways. The form that community schools have taken where they partner with a broad based community organization has varied locally, but has depended on the strength of the community organization. This paper will look briefly at the history of that model particularly with the community schools that partnered with the Texas IAF organizations (Shirley 2002) and at a currently developing community school model in one school district in northern New Jersey. The community school model was adopted in part because of school administrators’ previous experience with community schools in other districts, and in part as a way to foster community engagement in schools that are struggling. The community school model has been applied by the school district to particular schools that are designated by the district as “focus” schools due to student test performance. Community engagement is thus seen as one way to address the “achievement gap” from the perspective of the school district. From the perspective of the community organization, the community schools model provides a means for more parental and community involvement in the school, and the potential for greater democratic participation in the interests of students’ well-being and education, and thus for the advancement of educational justice. Among the challenges faced to implementation of the community schools model were the very problems in the neighborhood that the community organization and school district hoped to address. For example, the problem of gun violence in the neighborhood came to the fore because of a murder that happened very near the community school within a half hour of school dismissal. This affected the willingness of parents and community members to allow their children to be at after school activities and to attend events at the school.
The community schools model that Shirley outlines was successful in achieving the goals of the school district of raising student “achievement” as measured by test performance, and the goals of the community organization in deepening parental and community engagement in the schools. This depended, however, on the deep engagement with a specific community organization. Central to the paper will be the ways that findings from earlier community schools practice might be applied to the current community schools. In particular, given the very different cultural, social, and political context of an urban setting in northern New Jersey from the schools that Shirley studied?

Author

• Jyl Josephson, Rutgers University - Newark