1. Tell us about your community school. 

There is a great partnership at the Arnold Community Learning Center (CLC) between the school, Lincoln Housing Authority as the lead agency, and Lincoln Parks & Recreation as the before- and after-school program service provider. Together, we…

Enka Middle School in Asheville, NC hosted their first Homework Diner, bringing together parents, students, volunteers, and school staff over a hot meal while working on homework. 

"This is the first time I have felt real hope for my child at school. I was able to meet with his teachers and it wasn't some huge deal. We just spoke and I feel like I was actually heard. THIS diner is a good thing." 

- Parent attending the first…

1. Tell us about your community school. 

We are in the second year of implementing the community school strategy at Enka Middle School. We are part of the Asheville-Buncombe Middle Grades Network, a collective impact group that includes representatives from two school systems (Asheville City Schools and Buncombe County Schools), four area middle schools, community partners, local universities and others.

This year, we have been working on building on…

Welcome to our new blog post series “Community Schools Bright Spot” where we’ll share an inspirational community school win to get you through the week. Have a “Bright Spot” story to…

Coordinator Spotlight

Name: Erin Velez

School: Rosa Parks Elementary

Location: Tulsa, OK

Grades: PK-5 / 850 Students / 95% FRL

Years as…

Reposted from Challbeat New York: http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2016/02/22/fist-bumps-and-a-war-room-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-community-school-director/#.VstfwvkrKUl…

Our community school’s “stamp” system is genius. Red stamps, green stamps, a left stamp vs. a right stamp, a signature on the top, a signature on the bottom, parent signatures, teacher signatures. It all means something. It’s a fantastic parent-school communication tool. It covers everything from attendance to homework completion to GPA to how long a student has to stay after school and more. A six page document condenses into a tiny font front/back explanation that students go over with…

Good morning Coordinators Network.

I am  working with our initiative around streamlining the way we operate. The  model we use in Hartford is based on the Children's Aid Society in NYC  where each lead agency director/coordinator…

It didn’t make sense to me until 2008. There was a shooting at a church in Kentucky. In a sermon months later, my minister challenged us to consider empathy in such a cruel moment, when someone was such a monster in a community.

Empathize with a shooter?

How about empathize with that feeling of not belonging, of not understanding, of not feeling safe, of feeling ostracized? While I couldn’t condone shooting because of any of these feelings, I could feel sadness for the person,…

I spent hours on the phone with my coordinator colleague Lua last year. I spent hours listening to her tears, seen or unseen, listening to her fatigue, the only thing keeping her in the job being the love of her students and the cause of community schools itself.

In her words, “coordinators are dedicated to a job without much upward mobility or structured forms of recognition/advancement.” And for us, it’s true. Lua has been a coordinator for four years, I have for five. We both have…

“I mean, let’s be real here. Do I really care about what you do? I see you, I know what field you work in—college access, youth development, environmental justice, mental health—but do I really care about you? Do we really care about each other? Do we even know each other?”

The honesty killed me, and I…

The Community Schools National Forum was a roller coaster for me. Though inspired by the vision clinics in schools, youth creating videos, teachers sacrificing it all to reform their schools, and district and state level policies supporting our movement, it was difficult for me not to be a little self conscious.

On the heels of the Cincinnati Public School Fall Showcase, the checklist continues as we prepare for the most exciting upcoming event next April, the National Community Schools Conference coming to Cincinnati. This opportunity brings a myopic focus for my work as the resource coordinator at Roberts Academy, but also invites a deeper concentration of engagement for our partnerships in the school as well as community and business partners, families, students, and staff. The attention to…

The work we do across the country is full of more than its share of challenges. Often we spend more time operating from a deficit perspective as opposed to an asset perspective. Yet we all have a series of what I like to call "bright spots" which are the things we do exceptionally well that aid in achieving our organizational, school/site and initiative goals. The wonderful thing about bright spots is if they are constructed well they can be replicated. So what are your bright spots? What…

It’s hard to be new. Four years ago, new to California and a new Community School Coordinator, I found myself in a fiercely proud community that wondered who I was and what I thought I was doing at their high school. I didn’t look like many of them, I didn’t sound like them, and even when I played by the rules, I felt like everyone was waiting for me to screw up instead of lending a helping hand. They thought I was just going to be another flavor of the month in education reform. I get it.…

I was privileged to be able to spend my evening with representatives from the Children's Aid Society today.  And while the discussion had several focal points, there was some extended conversation about what shared leadership means.  

So I ask, what does does shared leadership mean to you?  How does it show up in your practice daily?

Hello Coordinators!

We are so excited to have this site up and running!

To start, I would like to introduce myself.  My name is Annie Bogenschutz and I am one of the Co-chairs for this network.  After nearly a decade of involvement with Cincinnati Public Schools' Community Learning Centers, I am the…