By Zach Vander Veen
Part One: The Idea
At a meeting a colleague observed, “Now, every school can be a Community School.” The idea struck me: technically any school could adopt the Community School model, but would they choose to, and would it truly benefit students—the only outcome that really matters?
The Community School approach is not new. For decades educators and community leaders have advocated for schools that serve as hubs for learning and support. Several states, including California, have recently accelerated efforts to convert many public schools into Community Schools, underscoring renewed interest in this model for improving student outcomes and addressing broader community needs.
National organizations define Community Schools as a long-term strategy centered on partnerships between schools, families, and community leaders. These partnerships align resources and supports around students so that academic instruction is reinforced by services that address social, emotional, health, and basic needs. Effective Community Schools combine strong teaching and rigorous academic content with wraparound supports to help students master 21st-century skills and competencies.
Considerations for Sustainable Community Schools
A Community School is both a place and a network: it functions as a public school while connecting deliberately with community resources to meet students’ varied needs. The goal is to create an integrated environment where education, health, social services, family engagement, and community development are coordinated to support the whole child.
Research indicates that when schools attend to students’ academic, emotional, physical, and social needs—and cultivate a genuine sense of belonging—students thrive. For example, a longitudinal study of Promise Academy Charter Middle School found that students in a Community School model graduated high school on time at higher rates than their peers in traditional schools: 71 percent versus 58 percent. These students also scored higher on state exams in math, English, and social studies, with gains equivalent to roughly one to two years of grade-level advantage.
The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the close link between health and education. In a policy analysis, observers noted that Community School strategies can reduce the pandemic’s social and learning impacts by organizing community resources to remove barriers to learning. This place-based approach focuses on academics while integrating health and social services, youth development, and community engagement to support recovery and resilience.
Community Schools often emphasize additional nonacademic services for students who need them most: counseling, social work, nursing, food security, and other supports that reduce obstacles to learning. But these services are most effective when they are coordinated across partners and embedded within the school’s instructional mission.
Sustainable Community Schools depend on collaborative systems and clear processes. Practical strategies for building integrated supports include:
- Regular wellness check-ins for students and educators to monitor emotional and basic needs, identify anxiety, isolation, or disengagement, and connect people to supports.
- Partnerships with mental health providers and other health services to strengthen Tier 1 practices and provide timely interventions for students and staff.
- A transparent, collaboratively designed system for accessing supports that involves students, teachers, families, and community partners in planning and implementation.
- Interdisciplinary school-based response teams—comprised of classroom teachers, special educators, administrators, student-support specialists, and family or community representatives—to coordinate referrals, professional learning, and coaching.
- Thoughtful allocation of specialist staff across in-person and distance learning contexts, ensuring that school psychologists and other specialists reach the students and campuses with the greatest need while maintaining consistent intervention practices and professional learning expectations.
Today more than 5,000 schools in the United States are recognized as Community Schools. The American Federation of Teachers has produced resources, including a checklist titled “Is My School a Community School? A Checklist for Teachers and School Staff,” which outlines key areas for planning and partnership: school-site strategy, academic and nonacademic partners, instruction and programming, school culture and climate, family engagement, and health and wellness. That checklist underscores an important point: becoming a Community School is a process that requires patience, trust, and ongoing collaboration among school staff, students, families, community partners, and administrators.
The Community Schools Playbook emphasizes that Community Schools are most effective when they are comprehensive, research-based, locally owned, and responsive to local needs and assets. These schools commit to shared leadership, evidence-based practices, and partnerships that combine expertise and resources to support student success.
In Part Two, we will examine the practical steps and structural changes required for all schools to function as Community Schools, including funding, staffing, governance, and community engagement models.
About the author
Zach Vander Veen has served as a history teacher, technology coach, administrator, and director of technology. He enjoys learning, teaching, traveling, and exploring with his family. Zach is currently co-founder and Senior VP of Innovation and Outcomes at Abre.io, an education management platform.