Bringing Schools Back Into Communities: The Union Role in the Community Schools Movement

• In Event: Beyond Bread and Butter: Rethinking the Influence of Education Unions in Policy and Practice

Abstract

As it becomes ever clearer that market-based reforms such as vouchers and charters are not living up to their supporters’ claims, community schools have emerged as a promising approach to improving public schools (Oakes et al. 2017). While community schools take on a wide variety of forms, NEA views them as sharing six pillars:

• Strong and proven curriculum that goes beyond preparing students for standardized tests in reading and math to include social studies, science, foreign languages, the arts, music, and more;
• High-quality teaching led by educators who are fully licensed, knowledgeable about their content, and skillful in their practice;
• Inclusive leadership, with a leadership team that includes administrators, teachers, and other school staff and keeps the community school strategy central in decision-making;
• Positive behavior practices that emphasize and model positive behaviors and interactions, use restorative practices to help students learn from their mistakes, and avoid zero-tolerance approaches;
• Family and community partnerships that include parents, caregivers, and community members beyond volunteerism to include decision-making, governance, and advocacy;
• Community support services that bring together academics, health and social services, youth and community development and community engagement under one roof.

Education associations such as the NEA are uniquely positioned to support community schools. NEA members include not only teachers but education support professionals (ESP) such as paraeducators, bus drivers, and custodians, and certificated staff such as librarians and therapists. This breadth of membership, combined with NEA’s extensive network of community partners at the national, state, and local levels, allows us to operate as the unifying force for the diverse organizations and interests necessary to implmement the community schools approach. NEA has made racial and social justice a core tenet of its work and views community schools as a way to counteract the resource inequities, disproportionate discipline practices, and punitive school accountability systems that plague poor communities and communities of color.

In this presentation and the accompanying commentary paper, participants will learn about the work NEA and its affiliates are doing to build and sustain community schools. Presenters will include the director of NEA’s community schools work and local members and leaders who have been active in the California Alliance for Community Schools, a partnership between eight large union locals. [This proposal only lists NEA staff; practitioner participants will be added once they can be confirmed.] Beyond sharing the specifics of the model, we will engage symposium participants in a discussion of the following questions: How will we know if the promise of community schools has been fulfilled? How can community schools scale and spread in a way that does not dilute the approach? How should education researchers go about studying the union role in community schools?

Author

• Andrea I. Prejean, National Education Association