What if we've been looking at sustainability all wrong?

When practitioners think about community school sustainability planning, especially as California Community School Partnership Program (CCSPP) grants continue to “age,” the first (and maybe only) question they often ask is, “how are we going to replace this funding?” But sustainability planning shouldn’t revolve around “dollar for dollar replacements,” and shouldn’t just seek to answer one question. Instead, planning should be a process that clarifies what exactly we’re hoping to sustain and identifies the best strategies to make that happen. Here are some ways you and your interest holders can create a comprehensive and realistic sustainability strategy.

First, ask the right people

Like other aspects of community school development, sustainability planning shouldn’t be done by just a couple of people. It’s an opportunity to bring your interest holders together – and cast a wide net. And if you haven’t been building your relationships with different interest holders yet, this is a great time to start. Get people to take a good look at your community school (CS) development to date. What’s gone well? Where have you achieved your goals? Where do you have room to grow, and how do you want to continue to develop our work?

These questions can’t be answered by just the Community School Coordinator (CSC) and the principal.Teachers, students, families, and community partners and members should all be actively engaged in sustainability conversations. If you’re a site-based practitioner, think about what role your district team can have in your sustainability planning work. If you’re a district-level practitioner, think about how you might want to engage your County Office of Education. You might want to also think about how to connect in other community or county level municipal agencies. For example, is there a role the health department can/ should play in this (and other, while you’re at it) aspect of your CS development work?

Second, ask and answer the right questions

What practices and ways of working together, exactly, do you and your team want to sustain? Why? You might break your community school development into some categories, like:

• Strengthening trust among your school, families, students, community

• Co-creating opportunities for meaningful relationship-building and community connections

• Solidifying team structures, shared decision-making practices, and new ways of working across roles

• Enrichment programs and supports

• Staff roles

• Professional learning and capacity building opportunities

Or you may want to focus on different aspects of the CS Forward Community School Essentials Framework, like the enabling conditions (trusting relationships, shared vision, actionable data and inclusive decision making) or a couple of the key practices (like expanded and enriched learning opportunities or integrated support services or powerful student and family engagement). Are there investments you can make now that will support sustainability later, like data tools and methods of communicating about data or building inclusive decision making structures and capacities? Are there partnerships you can strengthen (maybe with community based organizations or other municipal agencies) that contribute to integrating and aligning programs, services and supports?

Then work with interest holders to answer “why” for each component. Relationships, trust, shared leadership, and inclusive decision-making are essential to community school development, so it’s pretty clear why you’d want to continue working on that. But when it comes to programs and supports, it gets a little trickier. Do you want to sustain a specific program because you’ve always had it, or because it’s something that helps you achieve your shared community school vision – what does the street data say?

If it’s important for you to sustain the Community School Coordinator (CSC) role (and we’d argue that it is!), put that as a priority goal. Or, if there are other implementation priorities that take precedence, you should think about the responsibilities of the role and alternate ways to fulfill those functions (more on that below).

Now the fun part: the how

Believe it or not, sustainability planning is an opportunity for strategic design and creativity. We’re not likely to find a “dollar for dollar replacement” for CCSPP grants. So take the opportunity to be strategic about what needs to be in place to lay a foundation for long-term sustainability and growth. That’s where creativity comes in. Break it down into manageable chunks.

In order for key practices (and, for some people, new ways of working) to truly take root, people need to build their capacities – their community school muscles – around new skills and new capacities. You might want to think about investing in capacity building around shared leadership, inclusive decision making, and making meaning out of a wide range of data (from satellite to street). What do you need to do (or continue doing) now and in the future to ensure that your teams build skills that stick? Consistent, scaffolded professional development and coaching centered on shared leadership and decision making could be one strategic priority. Or, setting expectations and structuring teams, developing meetings protocols, and strengthening partnerships around inclusive decision-making. People also need time and opportunities to build trust and strengthen relationships. Your plan can include making space for these connections, too. Bonus: once these capacities and systems take root, sustaining them is not “free,” exactly, but it may not require a “dollar for dollar replacement” of current funding. Working in a community school way becomes part of how your school or LEA functions. That’s transformative sustainability.

Think carefully about the programs, supports, and staff positions that you want to sustain. Pull this apart and look at each individually. Prioritize existing programs – what evidence do you have that they are all still working towards agreed upon goals? Are there new partnerships that could still bring supports and programs to your school?

In terms of staff, we’ve already covered that the Community School Coordinator (CSC) is a cornerstone of community school development. Look at options for sustaining that role–and/or viable options for fulfilling CSC functions. This might mean blending and braiding different funding sources to maintain the role. It may mean splitting the functions across a few people’s roles or across teams. No matter which route you take, this transition should not happen overnight— it will take some time to develop people’s capacities to take on different functions of the coordinator role.

Practically speaking, there are ways to think about sourcing of funding and putting together budgets that can support sustaining the CSC role. Blending and braiding funding from a range of different sources, connecting CS development and specifically the CSC role to your LCAP and SPSA, and tapping into other grants

Show your work

Make sure you document your sustainability planning process – who has weighed in, meeting notes, ideas, questions and action items. If you’re a CCSPP grantee, the STAC’s sustainability planning template can be a good place to capture your conversations, decisions and plans, and to track progress. Or maybe you have another action plan template that your team already uses. The point is to be able to roll up and reflect different conversations, ideas and decisions into a plan, and build out sets of next steps and action items.

Take a breath

Although it may not feel like it, you do have some time. Remember that sustainability planning isn’t “one and done” but an ongoing process. Be curious about what you want to maintain and your areas for growth, while remembering that you will always be working on building trust, strengthening relationships, and engaging interest holders in this work. And keep in mind the role that practice plays – the more you engage in, say, shared leadership practices, the stronger your teams will be in that aspect of CS development and the more it becomes a habit, or “just the way we work.”

Eager to learn more? Join us on May 20th at 9:00am PST for Office Hours focused on community school sustainability planning. Space is very limited — register here.

by Melissa Mitchell

Melissa Mitchell is a community school practitioner with more than fifteen years in the field. Her experiences range from Community School Coordinator to leading the Federation for Community Schools, a Illinois-wide capacity building and policy organization. Melissa has supported community school development in a variety of ways, from providing coaching and direct technical assistance to schools, districts, practitioners and community partners to working with legislators and policymakers to develop supportive-state level policies that advanced community school development across Illinois.