Opportunities and challenges of community schools
With Mayor Michael Nutter departing City Hall in January, his legacy in education is facing some scrutiny. He gets good marks for his focus on raising graduation rates and support for more funding. But his agenda also included closing neighborhood public schools and the expansion of charter schools (and to a lesser extent magnet schools), policies that drew strong opposition.
Mayor-elect Jim Kenney is on record as favoring an education agenda that includes community schools. Over the length of his term, he would like to create 25 of these schools, neighborhood public schools that build community partnerships and bring under one roof the social services and supports that students and their families need.
In implementing this ambitious and transformative community school strategy, Kenney will face major challenges. But the local political landscape, and a shifting national picture, will definitely provide unprecedented opportunities for a progressive education reform agenda.
Local support for community schools
Included among Kenney’s education advisory team are people who advocate for community schools. Chief among them is Otis Hackney, who as principal of South Philadelphia High School, is pioneering the model for how to create community schools in the city.
City Council President Darrell Clarke, too, has made clear that he also favors a community schools initiative.
Parents, teachers, and others at three schools currently slated for conversion to charters as part of the District’s now five-5-year-old Renaissance turnaround initiative, have called for community schools as an alternative. Eighteen labor and community organizations have signed on to this demand.
A community schools task force, led by the Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), is training parents and school staff at several schools to be “ambassadors” for community schools.
The national context
Over the last two decades, the idea of community schools has gained momentum across the county. Today, there are an estimated 5,000 community schools serving two million students across the country, according to a recent article in American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers.
Some are individual schools, but, increasingly, whole school districts are adopting this approach. Enormous variety exists in these efforts, but there is also a common thread that sees addressing the deficits created by systemic racism and poverty as a necessary part of the education agenda. Community schools also focus on the whole child, on their emotional, social, and ethical development, as opposed to a narrow set of cognitive skills.
Recently, a national labor–community alliance has formed which connects the call for community schools with the historic demands of the Civil Rights movement and resistance to school privatization. A case in point: the fight to stop the closure of Dyett high school in Chicago and turn it into a community school. A national campaign focused on community schools as a transformational strategy is developing.
The challenges
Part of the appeal of community schools is the strategy of concentrating services like Opportunities and challenges of community schools | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:
