Among the successful strategies that have fostered educational equity over the past century are “community schools.” The national Coalition for Community Schools defines such a place as “a public school — the hub of its neighborhood, uniting families, educators and community partners to provide all students with top-quality academics, enrichment, health and social services, and opportunities to succeed in school and in life.”
Community schools are emerging again, this time as a promising approach to two critical policy issues in our state: school desegregation and school consolidation.
On behalf of the New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools, former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein referenced community schools as a useful legal remedy to facilitate school desegregation in his March 19, 2019 testimony to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Public Schools during a hearing on Access and Equity:
“So, any remediation program…to diversify schools must ensure that it does no harm, that it provides whatever extra resources to urban districts that are necessary to maintain and enhance their educational progress. One such initiative…is the community schools initiative that already is operating in Paterson, Trenton, Orange, Newark, and Newton. That program, which has federal funding available, uses both community providers and an extended school day and school year, to provide services to both students and their families. It could be an ideal supplement for urban districts affected by the impact of magnet schools and an interdistrict choice program.”
Adding significant value
In Path to Progress NJ, the New Jersey Economic and Fiscal Policy Workgroup proposed school consolidation as a means “to improve the quality of education and promote efficiency” by merging all limited grade school districts into K-12 regional districts. But what if significant value could be added by considering the benefits of community schools rather than just regionalizing administrative services?
Due to a generation of population shifts and outmigration, many of our public schools have physical space that could be used to deliver state and local resources to improve the lives of students and their families. Why might our schools be the right place for such consolidation?
The issue is that educators — and, by extension, the Department of Education — are not necessarily best equipped to deliver this assistance. Fortunately, New Jersey has a strong network of governmental agencies that provide services such as the departments of Health, Children and Families, Human Services, and Community Affairs. Community schools can serve as useful sites for these state offices to deliver critical resources to students and their families.
Adopting the community schools model deserves our strong consideration if we want to diversify student enrollments and maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of resource delivery to provide our youth what they truly need for success.