New Community Schools Report Making Nationwide Impact
The February release of our new report, Community Schools: Transforming Struggling Schools into Thriving Schools, jointly authored by the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) with the Coalition for Community Schools and Southern Education Foundation, is quickly driving momentum as our partners and education-justice coalitions move the needle on expanding community schools nationwide.
The day after the report’s release, Baltimore City Delegate Mary Washington led a press conference featuring the report alongside her new state community schools bill. Partner organizations Maryland Communities United and CASA, along with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), worked with the delegate on the language of the bill—the first in the country to embed funding specifically for community school planning, site coordinators, and after-school programming into state funding.
A week later, upwards of 40,000 people across 33 cities participated in school walk-ins, an action organized by AROS to demand the “Schools Our Children Deserve.”
After being pushed by Action United to make 25 new community schools a central promise of his campaign last year, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney unveiled ambitious plans to open a community schools office within the city government to make good on this promise. Action United, with Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), are in meetings with the new director and her staff to review the cornerstone six-pillar community schools strategy of the CPD report, advocating for restorative justice, authentic parent engagement, and a student-centered curriculum.
In Los Angeles, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) used this new report to buttress their argument that teachers and parents working together in neighborhood community public schools are the solution to what ails children in our poorest communities, not corporate moguls who want to turn LA’s schools over to unaccountable charter operators. The report spotlights a model community school in San Fernando Valley, a fact reported by the Oakland-based Ed Source, who wrote a summary of the report’s findings and recommendations.
