Out of a Crisis Comes Resilience: Community School Coordinators to Generate Social Capital in Baltimore

• In Event: Family-School Engagement in Diverse Environments

Abstract

Prior to the pandemic, community schools had been coordinating services to meet the needs of their families, and when schools closed, they kicked into high gear to provide for those needs. This paper reports on interviews with 15 community school coordinators in Baltimore to find out how they went about meeting community needs. Findings indicate that coordinators played a crucial role in getting families’ basic needs (i.e. food, shelter, clothing) met, but they also built trusting relationships, generating social capital in their neighborhoods set in racially segregated neighborhoods as a result of decades of redlining and policies meant to isolate Black communities

Author

• Jessica Shiller, Towson University