Community Schools utilize the “holistic” framework when addressing student needs.  

This means that while academic learning is a focus, so are student’s social and emotional needs, since they are inextricably linked.  Community Schools provide a wide range of services and supports to address inequities and overcome both academic and non-academic and non-academic barriers to learning and success.  While every Community School has different priorities based on their identified needs, all Community Schools strive to provide at least the most basic services and supports, including medical, dental, and mental health care services, as well as tutoring and other academic supports.  Resources for families are also made available, such as parent education, housing assistance and job training.  These supports are secured through partnerships with local social and health services agencies, non-profits and other community-based organizations. Community Schools also employ social-emotional learning, conflict resolution and restorative justice practices to support mental health and decrease conflict, bullying and punitive disciplinary actions.

Integrated student supports function best when managed collaboratively, rather than by any one individual at a school site. This most commonly occurs through the Advisory Council.  It is here that the impact of these supports on student outcomes are assessed during implementation.  All supports and interventions are connected to observable and measurable indicators of success.  This allows the Advisory Council to monitor impact and revise plans as needed, providing continuous improvement.

Highly effective Community Schools also provide expanded learning time and ample enrichment opportunities.

This means that the focus on students’ academic success and social and emotional development is also supported outside of the regularly school day.  Moreover, students are provided with high-quality programs and opportunities for enrichment activities for real- world learning.  This includes arts, physical activity, small group, or individualized academic support, and hands-on learning activities across a range of subject areas.  After school, weekend and summer programs provide additional academic instruction and individualized support.  As with student support, Community Schools work with partner organizations, in collaboration with teachers, to support these expanded and enrichment opportunities for students.  They utilize these partner resources to secure internships, provide service learning, STEM programs and other community, arts, or work-based opportunities.

These programs are integrated into the school’s existing academic programs. Therefore, close relationships are established with families in order to monitor student attendance and provide student referrals when and if needed.  Teachers, other school staff, and the community are active partners in development and implementation of these programs, as they are meant to be aligned with curriculum whether they take place during class time or outside of class time.

Active family and community engagement is essential to the success of a Community School.  

By promoting interaction among families, administration, and teachers, Community Schools invite families to be more involved in decisions about their children’s education.  As a result, schools are seen as educational partners and as a neighborhood hub for learning. Community Schools foster trusting relationships with all stakeholders and help build their capacity in an effort to create a decision making process that is inclusive, empowering and built on trust and respect.  Community Schools thus strive to create systems and structures for shared leadership, as well as welcoming environments for families and community members, allowing them to feel valued as essential partners.

Active family and community engagement in a Community School should take into account the historical and cultural barriers to involvement in disenfranchised communities.  Staff should make efforts to address these barriers, including language barriers, inflexible work schedules, and reliance on public transportation.  Moreover, Community School staff work to streamline access to services and scheduling programs, workshops, meetings and other events at times that allow the greatest participation.

Collaborative leadership and practices in a Community School can be seen as the process that links the other three pillars.

This practice starts with the development of a unifying vision and goals and the identification of shared responsibilities among stakeholders.  Collaborative leadership should extend beyond the school team.  It should include students, families, community members and leaders of community-based organizations, local government agencies, and university partners.

The heart of collaborative leadership is the Advisory Council.  The Community School Advisory Council is a leadership team that’s made up of diverse stakeholders from across sectors.  They are responsible for assessing needs, resource distribution, and continuous improvement, as well as the coordination of services and supports.

These include positive sustained relationships that foster attachment and emotional connections; physical, emotional, and identity safety; and a sense of belonging and purpose.

These curriculum, teaching, and assessment strategies feature well-scaffolded instruction and ongoing formative assessment that support conceptual understanding, take students’ prior knowledge and experiences into account, and provide the right amount of challenge and support on relevant and engaging learning tasks.

These include self-regulation, executive function, intrapersonal awareness and interpersonal skills, a growth mindset, and a sense of agency that supports resilience and productive action.

These include a multi-tiered system of academic, health, and social supports that provide personalized resources within and beyond the classroom to address and prevent developmental detours, including conditions of trauma and adversity.

California’s community schools view students, their families, and their community through the lens of their assets and strengths and value the collective wisdom derived from experience, family, history, and culture. California community schools view the language of students and family members as a vital asset to be uplifted. California’s community schools understand language to be family, history, culture, and community. Community schools focus on building an embracing culture of individual and communal wellness. An essential component to this assets-based lens towards sustaining wellness is ensuring that healing-centered physical, emotional, and mental health supports are integrated into the school community in ways that are accessible, destigmatized and culturally fluent.

California’s community schools commit to creating, nourishing, and sustaining school climates that are centered in the embrace of and support for all students in the totality of school interactions. This commitment extends not only onto the playground and cafeteria, but into every classroom and office. The commitment explicitly expects the presence of restorative practice rather than punitive, exclusionary discipline that detaches students from school and from needed supports, too often activating a school to prison pipeline. Such punitive disciplinary practices are inconsistent with this commitment and run counter to the spirit and intent of the CCSPP Framework.

California’s community schools commit to be driven by teaching and learning that are relevant to, inclusive of, and centered in the wisdom, history, culture, and experience of students, families, and communities. This culturally rooted instructional practice should be inspiring, inquiry-oriented, project-based, multi-modal, collaborative, interactive, and informed by the ideals of co-learning. Community schools prioritize experiential learning that deepens connection to and engagement with the community. By expanding learning beyond the school walls and the school day, community schools redefine traditional constructs who teaches, where we learn and how we build understanding.

California’s community schools all share a commitment to authentic and dynamic shared leadership in all aspects of school governance and operations. All school interest holders including students, families, staff, and community members must have genuine engagement in decision making about school climate, curriculum, and services. Shared decision-making practices must also prioritize transparency and shared accountability to ensuring information is both available and accessible, so that all interest holders can fully participate. This commitment to authentic power sharing at both the school site and within the LEA should also be evidenced through demonstrated support from all interest holders at each step of a school’s community school implementation plan.

An essential element for successful community school efforts are strategies to engage school and community interest holders in a coherent process of identifying and curating assets and wisdoms throughout the community. This process should also allow for school and community members to identify gaps in programs, services and resources that inhibit student achievement and community coherence.

There are many models for staffing community schools for success. All of these models include a coordinator who is responsible for the overall implementation of community school processes, programs, partnerships, and strategies at the school site. While districts and schools will approach budgeting and staffing differently, the essential practice is that a discreet position is a threshold for community school success.

Authentic shared decision making is a hallmark of the California community schools approach. Similar to the school coordinator position, LEA’s and school sites may design shared decision-making models differently in terms of their composition and scope, but both school site-based and LEA-based shared decision-making councils are also a threshold mechanism for implementing the California community schools model. The threshold practice will engage interest holders, including students, staff, families, and community members, in determining the focus and direction of the community school effort.

The community schools movement in California is intentionally situated in a suite of initiatives that stand to transform public education at schools throughout the State. Specifically, the work to expand restorative practices and racially just schools, multi-tiered systems of support, statewide systems of support, mental health services for students and families, expanded learning time, universal transitional kindergarten, and the state-wide literacy initiative are all initiatives that can be aligned to and integrated with the community schools movement. Proven positive practice will also align, integrate, and cross stitch with other education justice and equity initiatives at the district and school site level.