Report offers strategies to create successful community schools
Some of those schools are becoming community schools, which emphasize student and community engagement and work with outside partners to provide health, social and other services to students and their families. Across the country, about 5,000 community schools serve about 5 million students, according to the report, “Transforming Struggling Schools into Thriving Schools,” released this month by The Center for Popular Democracy, theCoalition for Community Schools and the Southern Education Foundation.
The report — which highlights Social Justice Humanitas Academy, a high school in the San Fernando Valley, as a model community school — recommends six strategies that schools can employ to transform themselves. One of the strategies is providing on-campus resources for students, such as health and dental care and mental health counselors.
California supports that strategy in two ways. The state allows on-campus health clinics to accept Medi-Cal payments for health services for low-income students. Medi-Cal is the state’s version of the federal health care program, Medicaid. And the Local Control Funding Formula — which provides extra funding for low-income students, English learners, and foster and homeless students — allows districts and schools to funnel some of those funds into mental and physical health services.
At the Social Justice Humanitas Academy, a mobile health van comes once a week offering health, dental and eye care. Students with significant mental health problems such as depression have access to mental health counselors on campus. A student women’s caucus and a student men’s group meet each Report offers strategies to create successful community schools | EdSource: