Community school (CS) practitioners and teams that have a curiosity-centered mindset pull data, gather interest holders, and dig deep on questions about what the data is telling them.
When you take a mindset that recognizes the cyclical nature of community school development, then you are truly digging into and doing the (hard) work of sustaining it.
Your needs assessment isn’t just about the product that you create, but about the process of collaboratively looking at data with your team and engaging in conversation with the people most impacted by community school development.
Chronic absence and truancy are serious warning signs. But an automated form letter alone, absent a meaningful connection outside of it, is a lost opportunity at best, and alienation at worst.
CCSPP funding can absolutely set the stage for whole-school transformation, but only if you approach it with an actual plan for transformation.
Community School Coordinators are the heart of their school communities, and the heart of our movement to rebuild and transform schools. Here's what we get wrong about their roles in our schools and districts.
Community organizing is a mindset – a way of seeing the world. More importantly, it is a set of principles that we can use to totally rebuild and transform our schools.
Right now, our state has no measure that helps us understand how to really support the rich ecosystem of rural communities because the only thing we’re using is a yardstick in a forest. And it’s a problem.
Community schools are not new; they have taken root across the state long before – and alongside – the CCSPP.
If you’re a California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) grantee, right now you have an almost unprecedented opportunity to build the car BEFORE you drive it.