Understanding the Implementational and Organizational Roles of Community School Managers

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Alternative Models of Leadership

Abstract

Community schools extend traditional school responsibilities by providing additional resources to support students, families, and communities—changing social and structural organizations of schools in the process. Integral in community schools are community school managers (CSMs). This paper uses interview data to explore the implementational and organizational roles of CSMs. CSMs’ implementational role was clearly understood as identifying, providing, and allocating resources. Their organizational role was more ambiguous, with no clarity on their organizational position or consistency in the teams on which they served. The ambiguous organizational role had benefits, like bypassing bureaucratic systems. However, the lack of change in social and structural organizations of schools left CSMs unsupported and threatened the sustainability of the community school model.

Authors

• Megumi G Hine, Johns Hopkins University

• Steven B. Sheldon, Johns Hopkins University

• Yolanda Abel, Johns Hopkins University