Community schools at their best represent the vision and voice of all stakeholders: youth, their families, the school, and the community. Schools alone cannot provide youth with the necessary resources and supports for academic success and healthy development (social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and moral). Collaboration is necessary for community schools to be successful, for families to thrive, and to ensure a healthy community in the future.

Why this module now?

Session I focused on the theme of collaboration in order to introduce participants to key concepts of community schools and the guiding principles of collaboration: shared decision-making, shared leadership, and a collective vision for developing a community school action plan. The session prepared participants to begin working together as school site teams, charting the course of their respective strategies for advancing a community schools model. At the onset, CCSP and NTACCS believed it was important to ground ACSD participants in a shared understanding of the definition of a community school and the principles of collaboration that would sustain their efforts over the course of the ACSD process and beyond.

What did we do?

Participants were provided with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the importance of community schools as a responsive strategy to the increasing demands on schools. Leadership teams were first introduced to the concepts of the Developmental Triangle as a framework for understanding what all youth need. One side is the quality instructional program which schools provide. Strategic partnerships can provide the other sides of enrichment (cultural and educational) and support that removes barriers and promotes learning and development. Information was then presented on community schools history, various models of community schools, collaboration styles, vision building, and action planning.

The session concluded with a vision-setting activity and action planning that prepared participants to go back to their sites and begin mapping strategies across their chosen community schools domain, including identifying responsible parties for implementation, charting a timeline for each strategy, identifying supports and resources necessary to implement the strategy, outlining the expected outcomes and results, and determining how the strategy will be evaluated in terms of success.

How did we do it?

·         Presentation that provided a legislative history of community schools in California and examples of successful outcomes of community schools for students, families, and communities.

·         Introduction to the collaboration module along with varying options for shared decision making. Participants were asked to create a personal timeline of their local collaboration along with benchmarks and challenges. Personal collaborative “journeys” were plotted on chart paper and posted on walls for Academy participants to view teams’ timelines and draw attention to highlights and major achievements.

·         Shared vision-setting activity that tasked teams with identifying: (1) the systems that would ultimately have to change, (2) how the system would change, (3) what it would take to make such changes, (4) who would need to make the changes (or establish agreements), and (5) how teams would gain long-term commitments or buy-in for the new community schools strategies.

·         “Working Backwards from Success” community schools action plan.

·         The session concluded with a debriefing (closing thoughts) and a discussion of the topic areas that would be covered in Session 2.

Reflections and Lessons Learned

·         It was important to spend time at the beginning to introduce participants to key concepts and definitions, and frame the work to be undertaken at successive sessions. The session could have incorporated more real examples of successful community schools that are in operation around the country and in California.

·         Session I was essential for introducing teams to one another and becoming better acquainted so as to foster the close relationships necessary to carry out the successive work.

·         The session introduced Leadership teams to a large amount of conceptual information (Community Schools models, collaboration, and vision setting) that was shared primarily through PowerPoint presentations. Participant evaluations indicated that they would have preferred more team discussion time.

·         It was important to spend time describing the roles, services, and contributions that each member of the Leadership Teams brought to bear on the collective effort. The vision-setting exercise as well as action planning helped to record some of this information as well as future commitments.

·         As with all of the Academy sessions, it would have worked better to assign “homework” or schedule technical assistance site visits between sessions so as to achieve better continuity and more rapid progress.