The focus of the executive order, though, was more troubling than its title: It directed the secretary of education to facilitate the closure of the U.S. Department of Education. Many have written, including here at ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, about concerns with the order’s implications for our education system, especially for the most vulnerable students. I share many of those concerns.

Eliminating expertise and capacity within the department will not magically enable states to do a better job to improve education, as those in states often count on federal support and guidance to enhance quality. 

The order’s explicit acknowledgement of parents and communities compelled me to write this commentary. Our work at the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement advances policies, practices, and research to promote family-school partnerships that support student achievement. Family and community engagement is one of the strongest predictors of student success. 

Moreover, improving the degree to which education institutions partner with families and communities creates conditions that improve other factors like teacher recruitment and retention, family and community well-being, and overall school improvement. 

Despite its importance, high-quality family and community engagement is usually an afterthought in many policy conversations. In general, there are not enough resources to carry out this work. More is needed to bolster everything from teacher preparation for family engagement to training and services directly to families. 

Many of the most important programs that foster authentic family and community engagement come directly from the federal government. For example, Title 1 provides funding to low-income schools in both rural and urban communities and includes funds specifically dedicated to family engagement. Full-Service Community Schools grants support active family and community engagement as one of the four requirements. 

Federal grants fund Statewide Family Engagement Centers in 19 states and Parent Training and Information Centers in all states, programs that have been crucial in elevating statewide work that better links schools to families and their communities. These programs are prime examples of initiatives that should not only be sustained but expanded. Although I am relieved they have not yet been defunded, initiatives such as these now face a huge amount of uncertainty. 

There is a nonpartisan and common desire to better connect schools, families, and communities in authentic ways based on shared power, trust, and accountability. It is also widely agreed that schools, and the education system more broadly, can do a lot more to support these relationships. 

However, in some cases, exclusionary practices are draped in the cloak of family engagement or parents’ rights, which pit families against each other and against schools or otherwise inappropriately frame family engagement as a “watchdog” exercise resulting in censorship and fear of retribution. These narratives misrepresent family engagement. Instead, prioritizing deeply-rooted connections among the various stakeholders would go a long way to building a system where all students are better served. 

All this being said, I am not naive. As aptly identified by many others, threats to a department focused on ensuring quality education for all students leave me apprehensive.

The order’s proponents argue that these programs can be easily administered outside the Department of Education. However, it is doubtful that shifting administrative responsibility for education programs to other downsized departments will be smooth and more efficient. 

Worse still, there’s not yet a clearly articulated plan to develop the necessary knowledge or infrastructure to ensure these programs could continue to succeed outside of the Education Department, especially considering that resources, capacity and staff expertise have recently been substantially reduced. The lack of concrete details and the growing uncertainty around these changes leaves more questions than answers.It is my hope that the order’s title is not made up of hollow words and instead reflects an increased focus on family and community engagement in education, especially as it translates into funding, policies, and programs that support this work. While I acknowledge much of the responsibility for education lies with state and local governments, we have a collective responsibility as a country to guarantee that all students—from urban Miami to rural Montana—have access to a high-quality public education. That is what the Department of Education was founded on, and what we must ensure remains a priority moving forward.

This student, who lives in temporary housing in the Bronx, missed the first two weeks of class. When his mother finally agreed to a visit from a social worker, she revealed that she had no money for laundry and her child had no clothes or shoes for school. Working with a city organization, the school obtained two pairs of sneakers, new clothes and a haircut for the student, plus detergent and a laundry card for his mom. His attendance increased by 25 percentage points over the course of the school year. 

With students missing class at alarming rates, it’s well past time to acknowledge that chronic absenteeism has become an educational emergency. Considered a before the pandemic, COVID accelerated the problem. In 2022, nearly were defined as , meaning they missed over 10% of school days — nearly four weeks of class. That’s of pre-pandemic absences.

Educators are urgently asking: What kinds of interventions actually work to get students in the classroom? Community schools have some answers. Through the holistic support they provide, from free school health check-ups to food pantries, community schools have reported than traditional New York City public schools. The 20 community schools in New York City’s Children’s Aid network saw an average decrease in chronic absence of 4 percentage points in 2022-23 from the previous school year. 

Here are three creative solutions from community schools:

Start a success mentors program 

A major factor in absenteeism is that students face tremendous personal barriers outside the classroom that impact their attendance, and educators don’t have the opportunities or bandwidth to touch base with them individually and help find solutions. As a result, students fall through the cracks because intervention comes too late. To address this, several community schools in New York piloted a success mentors program that pairs students with adult staffers, including teachers, coaches, custodians, security guards and administrative professionals. These mentors create a welcoming environment that can foster consistent attendance and improved academic performance.

For example, when educators in the New Venture Community School in the Bronx discovered one middle schooler was chronically absent because her mother had suffered a stroke, Success Mentors stepped in. They built a trusting relationship with the student, checked in with her regularly and engaged her in extracurricular activities such as cheerleading and dance. They also helped to connect her family to financial support and better nutrition through a school-based food pantry. Because of these holistic interventions, the student was able to prioritize school while her family’s critical needs were met.

Form social-emotional support groups

One group of students facing the steepest absenteeism and mental health challenges in New York is children of asylum seekers. One community school tapped a social worker to lead a support group that meets regularly to work on social-emotional wellness as a community, as well as to provide students with individualized attention. One student who arrived in February 2023 was consistently missing one out of every four school days. This year, she joined the support group and got more involved in school activities. She began participating in the soccer club, attended fun events such as Waffle Fridays and received health and vision screening. The school also helped arrange a paid internship for her. Her attendance rate for the school year was 96%.

Prioritize accountability 

During the pandemic, directors at several community schools made it a priority to assess data on individual students’ attendance, behavior and coursework to identify new solutions. They looked at the numbers and decided to focus on peer accountability — if students are waiting for one another to go to school, and expect their classmates to be there, there is a higher chance of attendance. From there, the community school leaders implemented a virtual school bus program, where success mentors create a walking route and pick students up along the way to school, providing that extra layer of group support and accountability. This tactic has been effective in improving attendance.

For example at one community school in The Bronx, 12 of 15 students who participated in the walking school bus ended the 2023-24 school year with an attendance rate of 93% or higher. Staff members leading the program found that the walking school buses have been especially helpful for working families.

To keep students learning, educators must find innovative ways to deliver them to the classrooms where the magic happens. School leaders, working with community partners, can assess individual student and family needs and confront barriers to regular attendance. Whether it’s virtual school buses, success mentors or mental health, it’s time to advance creative yet common-sense solutions to the absenteeism crisis. Sometimes, all a student needs is clean clothes to show up at school.

But being awakened in the middle of the night by sharp pains was new for Coreano and their family. Rats had begun to bite them in their sleep. Later that morning, they went to their Kensington school and pretended nothing happened.

Chronicling the life of Corem and two other Puerto Rican students from Philadelphia, author Nikhil Goyal presents harrowing accounts of childhood in his latest book . 

Readers see Corem, Ryan Rivera and Giancarlos Rodriguez grow up overpoliced and underfed. By the time they reached high school, the system threatened to close some 37 schools, and only after , shuttered 24. 

In some cases walking an hour one-way to school without transportation after an eviction left them displaced, Corem, Ryan and Giancarlos give low-income children a human face and serve as a cautionary tale. The Census Bureau has revealed the rate of childhood poverty has doubled, and the country will soon see pandemic-era relief for families, schools and come to an end. 

“If we believe that schools should be equitable and humane and child centered, then we’ve got to be willing to fight for an agenda that will end poverty,” said Goyal, who for the last two years served as the senior policy advisor for Senator Bernie Sanders on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Budget Committees. 

Their stories illuminate exactly how economic instability and harsh discipline policies impact children’s ability to learn safely, making the case for change, particularly as educators nationwide grapple with how best to support students academically after pandemic disruptions.

Making economic stimuluses like the Child Tax Credit permanent, Goyal added, would mean “the lives of educators and school staff and counselors would be a lot easier.” 

Named one of 2023’s best books by the New Yorker, also illuminates how school policies governing students can disproportionately shape entire futures, particularly for students of color who are more often suspended and expelled than their peers. Zero tolerance discipline policies, for instance, put children like Ryan Rivera in juvenile incarceration and harsh schooling isolated from friends for years, after being pushed to light a trashcan on fire at 12 years old.

In conversation with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, Goyal reflects on school closures, community schooling, chronic absenteeism, and what policies stand to make a difference for the nearly living in poverty nationwide.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You frame childhood poverty as a crisis to be — why release this book now? What’s happening?

The Census Bureau released its — child poverty more than doubled. More than 5 million children are plunged into poverty. It was the single largest increase in poverty in recorded history, just an astonishing development in public policy that I think deserves enormous attention as well as a full-throated response from people in Washington and people in power. 

The increase in child poverty coincides with the expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit, economic stimulus payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and a number of other programs that have enormously benefited children and families, whether in terms of food assistance, or housing assistance, or Medicaid access. 

We’re also at this moment where a lot of districts throughout the country are facing dropping enrollments, facing fiscal cliffs with the end of ESSER funds. People are anticipating a lot more consolidations, and possibly something like what happened in Philadelphia where a school system weighed closing dozens of schools. What are some lessons that school leaders might glean from what happened in Philadelphia? 

In 2013, the school district proposed closing some three dozen. The argument was that the district was bleeding in a major fiscal deficit. In the book I cite a major report by Boston Consulting Group, commissioned by the district to evaluate the fiscal state of schools. One of the recommendations was a mass closure of schools. They also recommended a mass firing of teachers and other school staff and a very market-oriented approach to public education. The key recommendation was taken up by the school district, against the wishes of students and parents and educators and unions, who were an incredibly robust coalition. 

Pew Research and others have found that school closures haven’t actually yielded the balance of savings that the architects originally envisioned. They cause a lot of displacement, educational instability. And, and in many instances, students are not actually necessarily attending so-called “higher performing schools” after their schools shut down. 

I read about Fairhill School, this extraordinary school in the poorest neighborhood of Philadelphia, which had been serving generations upon generations of children of the working class. This was a school that had been deeply underfunded. And in spite of that, they were still able to provide children with a nurse, a safe environment. 

Their test scores weren’t as good as suburban districts, sure. But does that mean that we should necessarily be closing a school like that which has been an anchor of the community? I don’t think so. I think if we provide public schools with equitable resources, and the type of respect that they deserve, so many of the issues that folks might point you to in public education, I don’t think would exist. 

The charter movement has capitalized on this. But if you go back to the history of charter schools, and you go back to Minnesota and some of the earliest charter schools, these were laboratories of progressivism. We’re gonna bring innovation, bring the best, experiment with interesting ideas in pedagogy and curriculum and instruction and the teaching force. See what works and then bring the best ideas into the public system. That is the model that I would prefer, where charter schools work in tandem with public schools, not as competition.

Something I appreciated while reading is that you give these trends and the political events around them a human face, from the war on drugs and no tolerance policies for violence that led to thousands of incarcerated youth. What’s currently underway that you think might be on track to cause more devastation? Particularly for Black and brown children?

I think there’s a dramatic rise in the privatization movement. We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the voucher schemes as well as charter expansion. In Philadelphia alone, nearly 40% of children attend either charter schools or cyber charter schools. There’s cities all over this country where traditional public schools have become dismantled, and we’re seeing a rise of the private sector intervening in public education. There’s obviously some really amazing organizing and efforts by teachers unions and advocacy groups like Journey for Justice fighting back against those policies all over the country.

What’s at stake, if these models are to continue at the scale that they have? What would be the impact for students, based on your research and experience with Philadelphia?

If we continue down this path, where more and more charters replace traditional public schools, where voucher programs siphon even more dollars away from the public system into the private system, particularly the religious sector, then I think that’s one of the most grave and profound threats to American democracy. I think the foundations of American democracy are found in public education. I think it’s one of the areas of our society that has not been fully transformed and taken over by the market.

Look at health care, look at energy, look at housing. By and large, public education has withstood a number of those assaults over generations, but I think public schools are facing their most serious threats. The pandemic didn’t help. We can debate about school closures, the efficacy of that or not, but I think the reality is that they breed a distrust among parents who were rightfully frustrated about making sure that there was a place for their children to be during the day and be educated. 

One exception to this threat you’ve identified to the traditional public system is the expansion of 3K and pre-K programs in many cities. 

The early childhood education space is very fascinating to me. Public dollars might go to both public providers as well as private providers, and you’re seeing that there’s not a sustained level of federal dollars. A lot of those private providers cannot remain open because their margins are so low. 

There is a growing interest from states all over this country as well as cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they have poured an enormous amount of money into public pre-K. We’re talking about an area of great optimism. I am deeply encouraged by efforts by states and cities to expand early childhood education, because it is not only the right thing to do, it is good for our economy and society.

At one point in the book, you say their story is one of survival, where 18th birthdays are not rites of passage, but miracles. That it’s a story of social contract in tatters. In this reality, where so many children grow up in poverty, what are some best practices for school systems?

I think every school should be turned into a community school, where they have wraparound services, social and health supports. Universal free school meals, extended hours, restorative justice, well paid teachers and staff and modernized infrastructure. 

There are incredible examples of community schools all over this country. I will point to Cincinnati as the gold standard for community schooling, because they’ve converted virtually all of their public schools into Community Learning Centers. I am always struck by the fact that they have dentists and mental health professionals and other medical staff and doctors who are literally based in the school itself to provide care to students. 

We have to recognize that the issues and challenges that young people experience in their homes and in their communities don’t get left behind when they go to school every day. It affects their ability to learn. It affects their relationships with their teachers and counselors, and their relationships with their peers. 

We’ve got to really recognize that poverty and economic insecurity is the root cause of many of these educational inequalities. That schools can be places where children can get access to healthcare and all their social support. I’m very encouraged by that trend across the country. And the research shows that community schools have a positive impact on absenteeism, on truancy, on graduation rates, and student engagement. 

It’s the idea of, meet people where they’re at, provide them with the basic, basic building blocks for dignified life and you will see many of the social problems that once existed, either be reduced or eliminated.

were chronically absent by the end of the last school year, and we’re hearing more and more about school avoidance. What does Corem’s story reveal about this trend and its links with mental health, which is what some believe to be a root cause right now? 

It’s a great crisis. I would say that Corem has a harrowing, fascinating story with a lot of lessons. Today Corem uses they/them pronouns. When they were growing up, they lived with their mother who was disabled. They endured consistent housing and food insecurity. They would run out of food. They had to endure evictions. They moved in some years, twice or three times, which meant that they had to constantly switch schools and never really settle into one school. That meant Corem’s academic performance faltered. 

I know they’ve suffered from absenteeism at times, not due to their own failings, but simply because they were deprived of the basic necessities of a decent life. They didn’t have the tools and resources that would allow him to get to school on time every day. There’s one moment in the book where the landlord tells their mother that sorry, we just sold the house and you have to leave immediately. 

That means, in the middle of the school year, they have to walk more than an hour from the new home to the old school. Their mother was able to get them a public transit pass, but it just goes to show homelessness and housing insecurity are huge obstacles to consistent and regular school attendance. 

There’s a lot of research to show that homeless students in particular make up a significant part of the population that is going to be absent. As emergency rental assistance winds down and now we’re more than two years since the end of the national eviction moratorium, our families are really suffering through the housing affordability crisis. And I think we see that play out with children.

Whole-child education models are those that expand the ambit of schools beyond a traditional academic focus. While a range of whole-child models have been explored since at least the Progressive Era, use of these models has expanded greatly over the past twenty years.

Because nearly all children in the United States attend public schools, it can be a tempting place to provide near-universal access to programs and resources. However, for various reasons, some families and educators are wary of a more expansive role for schools in children’s lives beyond academic training. In the Hoover Institution’s report “,” I review several examples of whole-child reforms that have become popular over the past few decades: community schools, school based health centers, wraparound service models, and social emotional learning curricula. 

While some models have proven effective at shifting child outcomes in certain settings, none have yet been proven — at large scale, using high-quality causal research methods — to be a silver bullet that can overcome the challenges many children face today in terms of improving academic outcomes. Though they may have other positive impacts on their own, without related investment in academic reforms, they are unlikely to be the panacea for the low academic performance that plagues children in the United States. Thus, at the end of my brief, I close with recommendations for policymakers to think carefully about implementation of these models in their own contexts.

• Whole-child education models are becoming better known in the United States

• Their adoption in some public schools provides an opportunity to see which models contribute to academic success.

• However, they are a part of the topic of child welfare, not the entire picture.

In the past couple of decades, there has been a renewed interest in the idea that schools should expand their ambit to address a wider range of student needs around health and well-being. Often this is described as a focus on development of the “whole child” rather than just the academic aspects of child development.

Of course, promotion of a wider ambit for schools beyond the academic sphere is at least a century old, as is the debate about whether it is optimal. The intellectual leaders of the Progressive Era, in the nineteenth century, sought to bring a broader focus to education systems than the traditional academic one. This included various ways of engaging the whole child, some of which are similar to the models covered here, particularly the social and emotional learning curricula and community school models that have skyrocketed in popularity in the past several years.

Similarly, the roots of whole-child reforms that are focused on improving children’s physical health are deeply embedded in US education history. As early as 1850, states began requiring immunizations and sometimes hosted immunization clinics in schools, where there was easy direct access to children. Also, the beginning of what we now know as the standard school nurse model began in 1902 as a pilot program aiming to insert healthcare into schools in order to improve chronic absenteeism by managing easily treatable illnesses and focusing on prevention. Each of these foreshadowed the more recent creation and rapid expansion of school-based health centers, which insert healthcare providers directly into schools with the goal of improving academic and overall well-being.

Recent decades have seen a renewal in the popularity of whole-child models. To some extent, this renewed interest is partly a backlash to what many perceived as the laser focus of the No Child Left Behind era on student test score performance. The difficult periods of the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to this shifted focus. The recent version of this movement has also been helped by increased emphasis on the complex relationships between education, health, housing, and other social dimensions across a range of academic disciplines and policy spheres.

This whole-child movement in schools has taken many forms, some of which I describe in more detail below. Across all its forms, the theory of change driving whole-child reform has two main parts. First, many students struggle academically because their basic needs are not met. Second, supporting these basic needs directly by bringing healthcare and/or social service resources into the school itself will overcome the access barriers that some children face, particularly poor children, thereby increasing their ability to thrive academically and socially.

To some extent, this theory of change pervades the entire US education system. Almost all districts in the country provide some form of nonacademic care to students through the school nurse, school counselors, or expanded offerings like universal vision screening programs. And many provide extracurricular activities or partner with community organizations in a variety of ways. What differentiates the whole-child models of reform here from the standard public school environment is the broader range of services provided and the depth of engagement between the school and community partners.

Intuitively, the first part of this theory of change makes some sense. How can a child learn if they suffer from an ongoing undiagnosed disease or disorder that prevents them from attending school regularly, concentrating in class, or participating fully in the community around them? How can a child learn if they feel isolated in a community, are surrounded by violence, and lack strong support inside and outside of school?

There is little direct causal evidence to support this theory of change, and there are plenty of anecdotes about children thriving despite incredibly challenging experiences during childhood. Yet a majority of parents would agree that children thrive most when their basic needs are met. However, as with all aspects of childrearing, there is debate about which “needs” require fulfillment for children to thrive. Furthermore, there is debate about whether schools are the best provider of health and social services to support children.

For decades, people have debated whether schools are the most effective places to solve the deep-rooted societal problems, like poverty, that leave many children with their basic needs unmet. Some people see schools as the great equalizer, holding them uniquely responsible for the achievement and well-being of all students, regardless of their backgrounds or the social forces determining those backgrounds. Others argue that systemic poverty, isolation, violence, poor health, and other ills have such a strong role that schools cannot be responsible for overcoming them.

Because nearly all children in the United States attend public schools, it can be a useful place to provide nearly universal access to programs and resources. However, for various reasons, some families are wary of a more expansive role for schools in children’s lives beyond academic training. Some have concerns about the differences between their own values and beliefs and those promoted in the school environment, as is the case with the recent backlash among social emotional learning programs. Others have concerns about whether school employees have the bandwidth and expertise to provide an expansive range of high-quality care; instead, they suggest that a focus on academic knowledge would allow school employees, like teachers, to be more impactful. Still others distrust the push for schools to focus on issues beyond academics because of concerns about greater intrusion into the private lives of families.

In “A Nation At Risk +40,” I review several examples of whole-child reforms that have become popular over the past few decades. After describing the general framework of each, I explore research into each model’s effectiveness. Most have been described as effective by the literature, but this assertion is generally based on research that is largely theoretical, comprises mixed methods, or is conducted either at a small scale or without the types of carefully constructed comparison groups that are essential for determining causal impacts. I focus on summarizing the subset of this literature that meets the Tier 1 or Tier 2 standard of the US Department of Education for strong or moderate evidence of effectiveness from either an experimental or a quasiexperimental design study (What Works Clearinghouse 2020).

Further, since many areas of research have shown patterns of effective programs in small studies that have limited effectiveness when taken to scale, I place particular emphasis on the relatively few studies that have analyzed the effectiveness of programs with large numbers of students across multiple school settings. 

While some have proven effective at shifting child outcomes in certain settings, none have yet been proven at scale, using high-quality causal research methods, to be a silver bullet that can overcome the challenges many children face today. Importantly, when looked at in total and given the scale of the existing research, the lack of conclusive evidence of a clear positive causal effect of these reforms on children’s academic achievement casts doubt on the theory underlying these reforms. Though they may have other positive impacts, on their own and without attention to academic reforms they are unlikely to be the panacea for low academic performance that plagues children in the United States. 

Thus, at “A Nation At Risk +40,” I close with recommendations for policymakers to think carefully about implementation of these models in their own contexts. . 

Maria D. Fitzpatrick is a professor of economics and public policy in the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University. She is co-director of the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an affiliate in the CESifo Research Network. Her research focuses on child and family policy, particularly education. 

See the full Hoover Institution initiative: .

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has 45 days to draft a policy that makes co-location — as the arrangement is called — off limits at schools that serve low-performing, minority and poor students.

Charter school advocates lobbied hard against the plan, arguing that it unnecessarily pits the two sectors against each other and violates a state law requiring school systems to provide classrooms for both charter and district students. 

The state’s charter school association is threatening legal action. 

“We will not back down from protecting the rights of students,” said Keith Dell’Aquila, an advocate for the California Charter Schools Association in the greater Los Angeles area. “The board is bringing forward this notion that charter school students only deserve the leftovers. That’s not what the law says.”

While conflict over co-location has flared up in , the tug-of-war over facilities has been most intense in Los Angeles, which is home to almost a quarter of the state’s 1,285 charters. The arrangement has offered some benefits to districts. When voters passed in 2000, the measure made it easier to pass local school construction bonds by lowering the percentage of yes votes needed from two-thirds to 55%. That compromise seems less relevant now to board members and district staff who argue that charters squeeze district students out of space they need for everything from special education therapy rooms to clothing closets.

“There should be a sensible and reasonable way of looking at co-locations that makes it much less likely that schools that are struggling to raise student achievement will be interfered with,” board president Jackie Goldberg, who wrote the resolution with board member Rocio Rivas, said during Tuesday’s meeting. The resolution has support from United Teachers Los Angeles, and Rivas — a union-backed board member — promised to address the facility-sharing issue last year during her campaign.

Rivas and Goldberg want Carvalho to write a policy preventing co-location at schools that fall into three school improvement categories — the , which provides extra staff and emphasizes culturally relevant curriculum; the 100 low-performing “priority” schools, and community schools, which offer services for families like food pantries and counseling services. These schools “have enough on their plate,” said Goldberg, who argues that co-location hurts enrollment because charters lure families away from district schools.

, a special education teacher running to replace Goldberg, who is retiring from the board, said co-location requires schools to relinquish classrooms often used for meetings with parents or restorative justice programs. 

“This resolution protects all of the investments that the district has made in bringing innovative programs to our schools,” she told the board.

Board Member George McKenna, is also retiring from the board, which means the charter-district conflict would likely carry over into next year’s election.

‘Detrimental to families’

Those who oppose the resolution say it could actually lead to more shared facilities. If a charter school has to vacate its space, it might have to split its grades up across multiple sites. That’s what worries David Garner, the principal of Magnolia Science Academy-2, a charter.

“We believe that this resolution is detrimental to families — most importantly, high-need families,” he told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. Parents who depend on public transportation, he said, might not be able to send their children to his school if it has to relocate.

Magnolia Science Academy-2, part of the Magnolia Public Schools network, is currently one of seven schools — four district schools and three charters — on the same property in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County. Despite limited use of athletic facilities and other common areas, he said he has good relationships with administrators of the other schools. One of his daughters even attended Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, a district facility on the same campus.

“I’ve been on both sides of the district and charter space,” he said. “I don’t care about the politics; I just care about what the kids and the families want.” 

Goldberg said the vote won’t disrupt the 52 current co-location sites. But Dell’Aquila isn’t convinced, and said it will depend on how Carvalho writes the policy. The association wants the district to offer co-located charters long-term facility agreements to create more stability for staff and families.

The meeting underscored long-standing confusion over which spaces are available to charters. Goldberg said she’s always understood the law to say that charters could take over any empty classroom not assigned to a certified teacher with a roster of students. That interpretation would favor charter schools because it would make more rooms used for a variety of purposes, including the arts, STEM or discipline programs, up for grabs.

But JosĂ© Cole-GutiĂ©rrez, who runs the district’s charter school division, said that was a district practice and not written into state law. McKenna added that no one challenged it while charter-friendly board members were in the majority.

Rivas called the revelation an “injustice” that has disadvantaged district schools for years.

Carvalho, meanwhile, said ambiguity over the issue has only contributed to the conflict.

The superintendent’s challenge is to write a policy that protects the district from litigation. The charter association has sued the district three times over facility arrangements and in a Tuesday letter, accused the district of having a “sordid history of undermining and not complying” with the law. 

The resolution has been unpopular, not just with charter supporters, but also among organizations that work closely with the district. 

Ana Teresa Dahan, managing director of GPSN, a nonprofit advocacy group that opposed the resolution along with 25 other organizations, said she understands the challenges on both sides. It’s difficult for district schools to plan for growth because they don’t know which classrooms they might have to give up. Charters, meanwhile, have to frequently relocate and struggle to find “normal” office and cafeteria space. 

“Clearly, there’s a need for a better policy,” she said. But she called Tuesday’s resolution a “failure-to-launch effort” because it still favors district schools. Ultimately, she said, it will be difficult to implement anything that completely resolves the dispute.

“There’s no uniform way that all of these campuses use their space. Every school prioritizes their space differently,” she said. “I don’t know how a school board can make these decisions.”

On a rainy Monday before winter break, the hallways at Fruit Valley Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington, were unusually quiet. The pandemic had cut enrollment nearly in half, but that didn’t deter Staci Boehlke, who runs the school’s resource center.

She welcomed police officers into the colorful, light-filled space as they dropped off bags of donated toys. She spoke with a parent whose landlord sent a warning about late rent. And after recess, she found dry socks and shoes for a kindergartner who couldn’t resist stomping through puddles on the playground.

That’s why Boehlke, petite in jeans with faded knees and pink Converse sneakers, shows up every day — to offer a sense of stability to students whose homes can be turbulent, ensuring they never feel overlooked as she did as a child. 

“Staci is good about being calm in the chaos,” said kindergarten teacher Nikki Halstead. “She knows just when to come by.”

Named for the working-class community that surrounds it, Fruit Valley Elementary is bordered by rent-assisted housing and a Frito-Lay plant that employs about 450 of the area’s residents. In 1999, it became the first in the Vancouver district to open a resource center where families in need could find food and clothing, but also get help with housing vouchers, job referrals, and links to mental health counseling. The concept — generally known as a community school — spread throughout the district, and now all 39 schools employ or share a resource coordinator.

But the job title doesn’t begin to describe Boehlke’s expansive role. Running the resource center is “what they pay me to do,” she said. “But five days a week, I see little people that I have the blessing of making sure are known, seen and heard. That’s the stuff they couldn’t pay me not to do.”

As the resource coordinator, Boehlke is the focal point between families and businesses and nonprofits that pay for everything from afterschool programs to backpacks full of school supplies. 

“Everybody goes away with their cup filled,” said April Thatcher, a longtime partner of the school who runs a 24-acre vegetable farm about 20 minutes north of Vancouver.

‘Another seat at the table’ 

Wearing cargo pants and a red waterproof jacket, her hair tucked under a knit cap, Thatcher trekked through the mud toward her barn where donkeys Eyeore and Dumpling live with hens and a few rescued goats. Her business, she said, caters to customers who want organic produce directly from the farm. But Thatcher and her husband Brad were unsatisfied serving an exclusively niche market. They wanted to give less-fortunate families a chance to enjoy the arugula, kale, zucchini and other crops they grow.

“We got tired of hearing 
 ‘Well, that’s great if you can afford it,’” Thatcher said, as Slim Pickings, a gray cat, circled her ankles. “That’s not who we are.”

She took that “wisp of an idea” — expanding the program to low-income families — to Boehlke, who in a matter of days found donors willing to put up $10,000 a year to give farm “memberships” to about 20 families. Thatcher’s clients matched it.

was born in May of 2020, just after the pandemic set in. Parents were anxious about going to the grocery store, and when they did, often found the shelves bare. Parents used to working two jobs to pay the bills were suddenly out of work.

Esmeralda Ocampo, who has fourth- and eighth-grade boys, said the fresh produce was especially helpful when her husband lost his job in 2020. 

“We’re receiving stuff that we never knew existed,” Ocampo said. “My little one is always looking in the bag to see what is new.”

Now Thatcher has linked up with another farmer offering customers fresh berries and a fisherman supplying wild salmon. She has a waitlist of potential customers, and her paying members value supporting families in need. A classically trained chef from Mexico showed the Farm to Heart families how to prepare some of the produce.

Boehlke’s strength, Thatcher said, is “pulling out another seat at the table and saying, ‘Sit down.’ ”

Despite its name, Fruit Valley is a food desert. Beyond a few convenience stores, the nearest supermarket is over a mile away — two bus rides for parents who depend on public transit. Matthew Fechter, the school’s principal, sends those looking for a meal to a nearby Shell station for fried chicken.

That’s why the Clark County Food Bank, which serves the greater Vancouver area, expanded its reach into the community. In 2015, Boehlke began turning the resource center and her husband’s church into makeshift pantries while the food bank built a satellite location, the Community Kitchen. Boehlke even drove to the main location, about five miles away, to pick up food. 

Emily Straw, the food bank’s director of programs, saw a need for bilingual volunteers to communicate with the neighborhood’s growing Hispanic community. Boehlke asked members of Padres en Alerta, or Parents on Alert — a Spanish-speaking moms’ group — to help. Now, some of their children volunteer at the Community Kitchen, just down the street from the elementary school.

“There is a culture where we take care of each other in Fruit Valley,” Straw said. “That emanates from Staci.”

‘Emotional support’

Before COVID-19, the resource center served as a hub where parents connected after dropping off their children, often working on projects to benefit the school. For Amber Walker, who left an abusive relationship in Seattle in 2005 and struggled to support two young children on her own, it was much more. 

“There would be days I would run out of food for my kids, and you could go over there and get canned food. I don’t know many schools even to this day that do that,” said Walker. 

Boehlke let Walker use the copy machine to complete her divorce paperwork and helped pay her electric bills with funds from a district account.

“Staci was in our lives for three or four years,” Walker said. “That emotional support for me was very fortifying.”

Boehlke didn’t see Walker as just a young mother scarred by abuse. When the local chamber of commerce invited Boehlke to talk to business leaders about the center several years ago, she asked Walker to stand in for her — unwittingly launching Walker’s career as a public speaker on surviving domestic violence.

At the time, the resource center “was a pilot, and I’m up there as a parent talking about why we need to keep this program,” Walker said.

School counselor Kelly Sloniker said Boehlke “knows our families inside and out.” It’s a sense of empathy that grew from painful personal experience.

When she was in kindergarten, her mother, stricken with encephalitis, fell into a coma. Unlike the students she serves now, the young Boehlke didn’t have someone who recognized her suffering.

She acted out in school and was transferred from class to class by teachers who didn’t know how to handle her behavior. In middle school, she became her mother’s caretaker, in charge of administering her medication. When Boehlke was 12, her mother died of an intentional overdose.

“Her suicide said to me that I didn’t do it right. I didn’t do enough,” she said. “I gave her her meds. She was saving them, and I didn’t catch that.”

Leaning on her Christian faith and the support of her family, Boehkle channeled that pain into her current position. In the process, she’s become an institution in this tight-knit community, located literally on the other side of the tracks from the rest of Vancouver. 

‘Know their stories’

Boehlke’s job — and understanding of the resource center’s potential — evolved over time. She volunteered at the school before becoming an employee in 2004 and threw her energy into organizing events like budgeting workshops — efforts, she said, that would sometimes “fall flat.”

“I, like so many others, thought I knew the problems, the needs and the solutions for people I did not yet know, understand or listen to,” she said. “It was a steep and humbling growth opportunity for me and continues to be for community schools. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to families.”

After a few years in her position, Boehlke began to look at family engagement differently.

“It wasn’t my job to make them engage,” she said. “It was my job to engage with them — to know their stories.”

It’s a different path than the one she set out on. In community college, Boelhke took courses to become a police officer. That changed when her husband Michael expressed fears for her safety. But one thing remained, she said: She still feels compelled to “run toward danger.” 

And sometimes it runs toward her.

One night last fall, she and Michael were asleep when a man knocked on their front door. He told her that a woman nearby was dragging her 10-year old son down the street.

The man, a parent from the school, had called the police earlier. But after they arrived, he asked the boy if he knew “Miss Staci.” He said yes.

Boehlke and her husband rushed to the scene. The mother sat in the back of an ambulance as an officer dialed child protective services.

After logging into the school’s database on her phone, Boehlke contacted another member of the boy’s family. The father, separated from the boy’s mother, soon came to pick up the child. Without a ready supply of foster homes in the area, the boy might have been placed outside of Vancouver. 

Boehlke described her involvement as “super simple,” but added the situation could have been far more distressing for the boy if he had been sent an hour away.

It wasn’t the first time a parent has tracked her down outside school hours. She once mediated a dispute between a husband and wife who came to her door. Former students, now in middle or high school, sometimes stop by looking for ice cream money. She gives them $5 to take out the trash.

“She is an anchor in this storm of so many turbulent lives,” said Jennifer McMillan, a mental health provider in Vancouver who has worked with students at the school. “She would say she is just a link in this whole chain.”

‘Amazing works of kindness’

During the turmoil in her own childhood, Boehlke once asked her father for a guitar. Thinking it wouldn’t make much difference, he bought her an electric bass instead. She took to the instrument immediately and joined her high school jazz band. Now, she plays at River’s Edge Church, where her husband Michael is pastor.

Guitars still occupy an important place in her life. Three hang on the wall in a low-lit room by the kitchen. During quiet moments before school, she reads her Bible and strums a 1940s Silvertone archtop acoustic she picked up from a yard sale for a few bucks — a devotional to start her day. 

“I did not go to school for any of this,” said Boehlke, who views her work as a calling. “Yet, I get to sit in the front row in my community and watch amazing people do amazing works of kindness for total strangers.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to both the Weave Project and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

But with even Biden concerned that Republicans could of the House — and Congress increasingly unable to pass an annual budget on time — the chances that K-12 schools can count on next year’s budget for a reprieve appear slim.

“I am hopeful that this is a down payment for what’s to come,” said JosĂ© Muñoz, director of the Coalition for Community Schools. Congress appropriated $75 million for schools that work with outside providers to address hunger, mental health, housing and other non-academic issues for families — an increase of $45 million. But Biden proposed a $413 million increase. Muñoz said he was disappointed by the “extreme shift.” 

“Now, we all have to go back to work to correct what just happened,” he said.

The White House has already indicated that Biden will request at least $400 million for community schools when he releases his fiscal year 2023 budget proposal, expected later this month. Advocates also expect to see him once again request big increases for Title I and special education. But based on this year’s process, some are highly skeptical that Congress will be able to pass a budget before the midterm elections or break out of its cycle of passing multiple short-term budget extensions to keep the government operating.

“We’ll welcome the commitment to education 
 but we saw how that shook out this year,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy and governance at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. She added that she could see another series of continuing resolutions that stretch into the new year. “That brings up all the questions of who’s in leadership come January and how that shapes overall numbers and program allocations.”

The organization’s top priority will once again be full funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,or IDEA — meaning that the federal government would pick up 40 percent of the costs of services for students with disabilities. Biden pledged that he would meet that requirement of the law. He proposed a $2.7 billion increase for fiscal 2022, but the budget includes far less — a $448 million increase — bringing the total to $14.5 billion.

AASA was hoping Congress would at least maintain the higher level of funding special education received under the American Rescue Plan, which provided an additional $2.5 billion for students with disabilities.

Congress is missing “a true opportunity to redirect itself forward on the IDEA glidepath,” Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, said in a statement. “We applaud them for the small increases included in [the] bill, while also holding them accountable for once again leaving IDEA severely underfunded.”

No more free meals for all

Domenech summed up educators’ less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the budget by calling it a “mixed bag.” The bill, for example, includes new funding to address students’ mental health and $30 million more for afterschool programs, but not a major increase for high-poverty schools.

The budget provides a $1.77 billion increase over fiscal 2021 for school nutrition, but leaves out waivers that would have allowed such programs to continue serving free meals to all students and have flexibility in meal planning to cope with food and supply shortages. 

That means after more than two school years of free meals for all students, regardless of income, families in poverty will need to apply for the National School Lunch Program for the 2022-23 school year in order for their children to receive free or reduced-price meals.

And “given the , schools will likely need to raise prices on those families that do pay” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association. With the end of pandemic meal programs, schools will also “have to significantly curtail summer meal services,” she said.

Biden also campaigned on tripling Title I funding for high-poverty schools. He proposed a $20 billion “equity” grant program to help close funding gaps between rich and poor districts and between those serving primarily white students and those that enroll more Black and Hispanic students.

The budget instead raises Title I funding by $1 billion, bringing the total to $17.5 billion. That’s the highest increase in more than a decade, but doesn’t include the new funding to reduce disparities.

“The Title I equity grants would have given the neediest districts greater assurance that they could continue effective academic interventions beyond the pandemic,” said Robert Tagorda, who led equity initiatives in California’s Long Beach Unified School District and now consults with districts on their recovery efforts. “Districts are coming to terms with the one-time nature of COVID relief funds. They’re wondering how they can sustain the tutorials, summer programs and other student services once the funds expire, knowing that it will take a long time to get kids back on track.”

Advocates for young children had a similar response after being hopeful last year that Biden would be able to push through his $400 billion plan to pay for child care and universal pre-K as part of Build Back Better. That legislation is now stalled and it’s unclear whether universal pre-K will resurface in a of the bill. 

For fiscal 2022, Biden originally proposed almost $20 billion for early-childhood programs, including Head Start and child care. The budget bill instead provides about $17.5 billion for programs serving preschoolers.

“Without more significant funding increases, these programs will continue to serve only a small portion of the children and families that are eligible to participate in them,” said Aaron Loewenberg, a senior policy analyst at New America, a center-left think tank.

Other advocacy groups say their recent lobbying efforts made a difference in the final numbers. The National Association of Secondary School Principals, for example, sent 350 members to Capitol Hill two weeks ago to press for increases in principal preparation programs and mental health services for students — a topic Biden addressed in his State of the Union address. 

The budget includes a $27 million increase for state grants that fund teacher and principal training and $111 million —  a $95 million increase over fiscal 2021 — that can be used to train more school counselors, social workers and psychologists. Beth Lehr, assistant principal at Sahuarita High School, south of Tucson, Arizona, was among the administrators advocating for those increases to address the aftermath of the pandemic. There are some teachers, she said, “who dread coming to work and parents who are struggling because they feel they can’t keep their kids safe.”

The state will divvy up more than $150 million, much of it from its American Rescue Plan funding, through a new grant program called .

Maryland Leads is “a choose-your-own adventure style program 
 with a curated list of options that only includes programs and strategies we know can effectuate positive results for children,” Choudhury wrote in a statement to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

“This is about Maryland doing the work, leading the way.”

The seven strategies that the effort highlights are:

• Grow-your-own staffing programs to develop teaching talent in-house
• Staff retention programs that improve teachers’ schedules, boost mentorship opportunities and give pay incentives for those who stay from one year to the next
• “Science of reading” approaches that systematize literacy acquisition
• High-quality tutoring during the school day for students that fell behind during the pandemic
• Restructuring schedules to allow for afterschool learning, summer programming and more effective family engagement
• Collaborations with industry leaders and higher education institutions to prepare students for college and careers
• Community school models that engage families and connect them with needed social services

Districts may invest in as few as two or as many as seven practices to receive funds. School systems that scale up science of reading approaches unlock an additional $2 million in funding, while those that build grow-your-own staffing programs receive an extra $1 million. Funds must be spent before the end of the 2023-24 school year.

“It’s a really ambitious approach,” Phyllis Jordan, associate director of Georgetown University’s FutureEd think tank, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “The issues that the state is singling out 
 are the evidence-based practices that are going to get you to make a difference for students.”

FutureEd has states’ and districts’ American Rescue Plan spending rollouts, and Jordan said that Maryland stands out for its effort at guiding districts toward approaches that have been proven effective. 

“Districts often like to make their own decisions. And this way, [Choudhury] is not dictating what they should be doing, but he is giving them incentives,” the researcher said. “Providing this sort of menu of options that can bring them extra money seems like a smart approach.”

“It’s exciting to see Maryland leading through this new program that aims to use American Rescue Plan funds in innovative ways,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in the release. “I’m heartened that Maryland Leads will help districts and schools both respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic and seize the opportunity our current moment offers to reimagine education.”

The grant builds on an ongoing effort in the state called the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future to uplift schools and support historically underserved students. The 13-year plan seeks to boost teacher pay above a $60,000 starting salary by 2026 and convert nearly 1 in 3 schools into community schools that help struggling families access nutrition and health care by 2035, among a number of other goals. 

The funds provided by the new grant will remain a fairly small percentage of the total money many districts in the state received in COVID relief. Baltimore City Public Schools was allocated $443 million, according to FutureEd’s numbers, while Montgomery County received $252 million and Prince Georges County got $272 million.

Still, the state effort “gives [districts] some guideposts about the right sort of programs,” said Jordan.

Initiatives to help districts grow their own staff can help recruit a more diverse and qualified set of teachers, successful models show, and can help retain staff. Science of reading approaches have been hailed by educators and researchers alike. Community schools approaches, known to support students and families living in poverty, have been a key part of the Biden education agenda and recently made headlines when Mackenzie Scott donated $133 million to the nonprofit Communities in Schools. And high-quality tutoring can provide a potent academic boost to students who have fallen behind, research shows.

Districts may apply for grants through the Maryland Leads program through April 7, and grants will be awarded April 22. The grants will be non-competitive, with the possibility that each of the state’s 24 school systems, which serve entire counties (with the exception of Baltimore City), could receive funds. The Maryland Department of Education will hold sessions to inform school leaders on the slate of approaches throughout February and March.

“A return to normal is not good enough,” Choudhury wrote in a letter introducing the Leads grant. “Gaps existed then and they will persist now unless we do something differently.”

Go deeper on the some of the strategies specified in Maryland’s plan:

—Grow Your Own Teacher Programs: Efforts to train a more diverse, home-grown teacher workforce in Rhode Island and Colorado (Full RI story & full CO story)

—Science of Reading: Texas educators help students gain literacy skills through the pandemic (Read the full story)

—Community Schools: Inside MacKenzie Scott’s $133 million donation to America’s top organization focused on preventing student dropouts (Read the full story)

—Summer Learning: Tulsa returns 11,000 students to campuses in July by putting fun before academics (Read the full story)

—High-Quality Tutoring: As schools push for more tutoring, new research points to its effectiveness — and the challenge of scaling it to combat learning loss (Read the full story)

The job as the Educational Community Worker at Duarte was part of a new initiative started in 2019 by the LA County Office of Education aiming to bring together county agencies, local nonprofits, community partners, and school districts to create “community schools” in 15 different high-poverty school districts. The goal is to make the schools hubs in their surrounding communities for services beyond academics and to target the non-academic needs of children and families.

Community schools adopt the idea that inside-school learning is intimately connected to aspects of children’s lives outside of school. By only prioritizing academics, more traditional schools are not addressing many of the fundamental barriers to learning.

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For example, have shown that students who are hungry are less likely to effectively learn. Similarly, students who experience community or household violence are less likely to progress academically. Student success in school therefore is largely determined outside school walls.

Assessing these needs on the ground by getting to know the students, families, and the community at Duarte High School was Covarrublas’ new job description. But those needs changed drastically when the school went fully remote with only a couple days under his belt.

His partner in the LACOE community school effort, Nathalie Umaña, who is the Community Schools Specialist at Duarte, had also recently started. But they were needed now more than ever as students and families faced unprecedented challenges.

So Covarrublas and Umaña got to work. Covarrublas called every family in the school, asking them what they needed and how they could help. Initially those needs included internet accessibility and food insecurity. Covarrublas was able to organize getting hotspots to families. Nathalie, whose role is to coordinate with community partners and locate resources, found food banks and other county programs that connected families to much-needed food supplies. Later, they found that the mental health of students and families was deteriorating, so they worked with local mental health service partners to ensure students and their families were getting the services they needed.

Lucila Osorio is one of the parents who got a call from Covarrublas when the school went remote and her daughter started taking her courses online. She had never seen a school do that before, she tells Next City through an interpreter. When her family struggled financially due to the pandemic, Osorio accessed one of the local food banks that she had only heard about through the high school.

Both Covarrublas and Umaña are employed by the county, not Duarte High School, and meet monthly with the Community School Specialists at the other 14 schools in LACOE’s program. This allowed the teams across the county to quickly identify resources and share ideas about how to best serve their families. At Pasadena High School, another school in the program, Community School Specialist John Lynch heard that the team at Duarte was calling every family and he quickly adapted the same strategy.

“We kind of stole that, to the point that we actually used the same script that Rene and Natalie were using. And so we were able to make phone calls as well at Pasadena. We have, you know, 1800 families and we prioritized calling folks who are in the farthest on the margins,” said Lynch, mobilizing some clerical staff and others at the school to help with outreach.

The idea sharing went both ways. Lynch published a local resource guide for families and students that got 1300 unique views on the school’s website. He told Umaña, who then developed a weekly newsletter that went out to families highlighting different resources.

It is this county-wide approach that makes LA County Office of Education’s model unique, and it positioned them well during the pandemic. In 2018 there were roughly across the United States, and since then the movement towards community schools has only gained momentum. Most community school models are initiated by the schools themselves or by school districts convinced by the research. But LACOE’s program goes even higher than the districts, allowing for more resource sharing at the county level and coordination among, but also beyond, school districts or individual schools. Having the personnel on the ground, but coordinating at all levels – community, district, and county – allowed for the kind of agility that these schools demonstrated during the pandemic.

“The unique thing about the LA County model is that it comes with a community school coordinator, which is the specialist role; but then it also comes with an educational community worker,” said Umaña. “It’s operated from the LA County Office of Education. That is a little bit different in terms of any other community school models.”

For example, have shown that in New York City’s 215 community schools (a significant site for research on the topic), there has been $12 to $15 of return in social value for every dollar invested. School districts that have adopted the community schools model have seen an increase in attendance and graduation rates, along with higher academic achievement and improved school climate. Additionally, community schools are shown to have the greatest impact on high-poverty districts. Three quarters of the students at Duarte High School are economically disadvantaged, according to data from .

LACOE oversees 80 school districts, only 15 of which are currently in the community school program. Those chosen were targeted based on need.

“The intent was to start with 15 and show its growth and impact, and not just continue with these 15, but to expand to other districts. We’re just starting our third year of a three year initiative. But really, the goal is to continue the work,” said Jose Gonzalez, the director of Community Schools Development at LACOE.

The program is part of a larger trend. Another school district within LACOE, the Los Angeles Unified School District has also been running its own community school program, particularly since 2019 following the teachers strike. LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country and currently has 40 schools in its community schools initiative, with the intention of adding ten more each year for the next three years.

Lisa Bowdoin, a health teacher at Duarte, has been following the momentum that the community school model has garnered over the last few years, saying that schools are experiencing a mentality shift that opens the door to becoming a community school. Bowdoin has been at Duarte since 1999 and has seen a shift since four years ago when she and the principal, Luis Haro, worked together to explore what becoming a community school could do for their students. She attended trainings run by the UCLA Center for Community Schooling that highlighted some advantages of community schools and was quickly convinced that this was something they needed to try.

“[Our students] don’t just need tutoring in math and science. There’s another aspect that was missing,” said Bowdoin. “It’s the whole idea that we should all get together and figure out what the needs are of this child and help them instead of everyone working in isolation. And I thought ‘Oh, this is totally what we need to.’”

Still, Bowdoin acknowledged that regardless of intentions, the resources and extra sets of hands was what allowed the school to assess student needs. Everyone was scrambling when schools closed: trying to figure out how to teach online, dealing with their own technology issues, and adapting their classrooms and curricula. Overwhelmed and overworked, teachers and administrators alone simply would not have the time to devote to finding community partners, connecting with individual families, and pairing them with resources. The fact that Duarte had two people whose job it was to do just that was crucial.

But the lessons should not be limited to the pandemic.

Osorio, the parent at Duarte, sees the benefits of the community school beyond just the pandemic. With three daughters, she has interacted with the school district in Duarte for many years, but she has never felt more connected to the school as she does now. Osorio’s family speaks Spanish at home and has never been involved in parent meetings because they have never been offered in Spanish, another thing Duarte has done recently to build a broader community at the school. Over the past year Osorio has met other parents, become more involved in the school, and is more comfortable reaching out for any help she or her children might need.

“[Having a community school] is important and very critical because when you feel connected to a school site, you have confidence and that just comfort to go and ask questions about services about how your student is doing and there is no fear and asking,” she says.

“You feel part of the school when you have that connectivity to the school.”

This article originally appeared at and is published in partnership with . Reporting was generously supported by the Solutions Journalism Network.