What We Mean by Community: Conceptualizing Black Community-School Relationships Through Community Member Engagement

• In Event: To BE with Black Communities: Possibilities and Visions of Justice

Abstract

Purpose
This paper aims to expand how education scholars understand community-school relationships, its role in educational engagement, and how the knowledge and engagement of Black communities, community members, and community-based spaces can be centered in educational change. I ask: How do Black community members and district engagement leaders understand community-school relationships, and imagine how Black community perspectives can be at the center of defining community-school relationships?

Perspective(s)
Institutions such as schools often are positioned to be the ones to construct definitions of community in the context of educational change (LeChasseur, 2014). From a school-centered lens, communities are defined as problems to fix, a resource to incorporate into schools, or alternatives to reposition to out-of-school spaces (Moje, 2000). These views lead to notions of saviors, deficit framing, the ignoring of community voices, and for power relations and structural barriers to go unchallenged which results in inequitable engagement and a weakened community-school relationship (Baquedano-Lopez et al, 2013; Cooper, 2009). Understanding Black community members' relationships with their local schools is particularly important given persistent tensions and forms of harm. Black communities are often cited as having unstable relationships with schools due to the anti-black racism embedded within schooling institutions (Baxley, 2022; Dumas, 2014; Posey-Maddox et al, 2021). This paper draws on BlackCrit (Dumas & ross, 2016) to center lived experiences of Black communities amid antiblack racism in schooling and engagement practices and its impact on Black community-school relationships.

Methods & Data Sources
Data is collected from January 2023 to January 2024 within a mid-size midwestern city and a small yet tight Black community. I took a qualitative approach to understand the organizational mechanisms, interpersonal interactions, and discourse that shape Black community-school engagement and its influences on its relationships. Interviews and focus groups include perspectives from Black community members broadly (i.e. community leaders, residents, volunteers), and school district engagement leaders that identify their role as having a primary responsibility to engage with the community. Additionally, data includes observations within education-based community engagement events and document analysis.

Preliminary Findings
Preliminary findings highlight the tensions of addressing the historical and present harm continued to Black community members in the city and school district. Black community members interviewed identify the moments of harm as part of the fractured relationship that they wish would be more discussed alongside the school district. School district Engagement leaders identify the importance of community-school relationships and describe that the relationships they seek with community-based spaces should have shared respect and shared values. This finding will be expanded in analysis alongside documents and observations that connect this discourse across Black communities and Black-centered-community-based spaces' perceptions of their previous and current engagement within the schools.

Significance
Efforts to strengthen community-school relationships must consider who gets to play a role in engaging in educational change. This paper aims to expand on how education scholars define community engagement in educational spaces by highlighting the multi-faceted experiences of Black community members' engagement for Black youth within a midwestern school district.

Author

• Virginia Downing, University of Wisconsin - Madison