Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Future of Public Education is a Community School feat. Kelly McMahon, Jitu Brown, Angelia Ebner, and Dave Greenberg
93 Plays1 hour ago
This conversation started 2 years ago, when I ran into Kelly McMahon at a summer conference. Kelly’s a kindergarten teacher at Hoover Community School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I was curious about what that label “community school” means in practice for teachers, students, and the community served by this new model for the area.
I’ve since learned that just because your kids attend Ames Community School District, for example, that doesn’t mean they attend a “community school.” Kelly put me in touch with Dave Greenberg and Angelia Ebner, senior policy analysts and community schools program specialists at the National Education Association, who have helped build and support thousands of community schools, as Angelia described it, from “coast to coast and border to border.”
And no exploration of the community schools model could be complete without including the story of Sustainable Community Schools in Chicago. Just last year, Major Brandon Johnson announced a near doubling of the number of community schools in the city, bringing the number to 36.
I spoke with foundational community organizer, advocate, and elected Chicago Public Schools Board Member, Jitu Brown, about how organizing for Sustainable Community Schools defused the push by elected officials for school closures, privatization, and charter-ization of Chicago Public Schools. For Jitu, the title of School Board member may be new, but he is Chicago born and raised, and he’s been organizing around education and all of its related issues since the 90s.
While there were just hundreds of community schools in the United States 15 years ago, today there are over 5,000 and growing in nearly every state in the nation. A consistent refrain from every person I spoke with for this episode was that community schools are the future of public education and the alternative to narratives about “failing public schools” that favor privatization as a solution.
NEA - What are community schools?
NEA - 5 Steps to Kickstarting Community Schools in Your District
NEA Community School Measurement Guidance Tool
Chicago Sustainable Community Schools
Eve Ewing - Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side
You can read out directly to Angelia & Dave @ NEA:
aebner@nea.org | DGreenberg@nea.org
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Community School Model
00:00:00
Speaker
Because the thing that made the fight for diet to me a model for for all of the communities to follow is it was a plan that was crafted out of love and community wisdom in partnership with academic expertise rooted in love.
00:00:16
Speaker
Right. So there were no low expectations in that plan. There were no, well, you know, these young people are going to to jail anyway on that plan. And when I spoke at diet's graduation two years ago,
00:00:29
Speaker
I looked at them and I said, we loved you before we even knew you. We love the idea of you. And i want I want you to understand that like this is a labor of love. Like, like, do you want a better world?
00:00:43
Speaker
If you want a better world, what are you prepared to do?
Exploring the Human Restoration Project Podcast
00:00:49
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Human Restoration Project podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Timothy Fox, David Nuffel, and Corinne Greenblatt. Thank you so much for your ongoing support.
00:01:08
Speaker
This conversation started two years ago when I ran into Kelly McMahon at a summer conference. Kelly's a kindergarten teacher at Hoover Community School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And I was curious about what that label, community school, means in practice for teachers, students, and the community served by this new model in the area.
Kelly McMahon's Journey in Community Education
00:01:29
Speaker
My name is Kelly McMahon, and I'm originally from Manchester, Iowa, and ah you and I um graduate in 2002. And I began my teaching career in Milwaukee Public Schools, and we had faced a mayoral takeover challenge with ah back in 2012.
00:01:48
Speaker
gosh, I want to say it was 2009, beginning of 2010. And in those conversations to defeat a mayoral takeover, the community school model emerged out of those conversations. um And so when I moved back to Iowa in 2011, that was something I was following, what was happening with the community school model being added in Milwaukee and expanded and just kind of kept my hands on and learning a little bit more about the model. And it's kind of funny because as I learned more and found out like how there was this institute going on in Milwaukee, um I had already been pastoring my principal and that just kind of like, oh, hey, guess what? There's this great learning opportunity. We should go. So we um sent a team. I want to say there were eight or nine of us. We had a parent
00:02:33
Speaker
We had my principal, myself, another teacher, our superintendent, a school board member, a community partner. All, so seven, eight of us went to Milwaukee to learn more about the community school model and um left there and got the green light to adopt the model at
The Impact of Community Schools
00:02:52
Speaker
Hoover. And that was back in 2000, seems so long ago. I think it was like back in 2008.
00:02:59
Speaker
2017, 2018, I think was when we got the green light. We went to Milwaukee and got the green light to add the model at Hoover. So it just made a lot of sense. We had a lot of great community partners already working with Hoover, but it was disjointed.
00:03:13
Speaker
um And so the model allowed with how you have to structure this framework um you to be more intentional and also finding out what are the true barriers instead of us always making assumptions because i think we do a really great job as adults working in schools of making assumptions about what those barriers are but also more importantly what are the assets that are within our community to help work together and problem solve and um address those challenges ah for student success. And so the idea is really about you're not only lifting up the child and improving their learning outcomes, but you're lifting up the whole community and you're empowering students and parents and community members to have a very active involvement and voice and decisions that are made right there in the school. And that school is truly the heart of that community.
00:04:03
Speaker
I've since learned that just because your kids attend Ames Community School District, for example, that doesn't mean they attend a community school. Kelly put me in touch with Dave Greenberg and Angelia Ebner, senior policy analysts and community schools program specialists at the National Education Association, and they've helped build and support thousands of community schools, as Angelia describes it, from coast to coast and border to border.
National Movement and Support for Community Schools
00:04:31
Speaker
Angelia Ebner. I was a local president in Arizona um in a really small district and um had the opportunity to work with some of our families um to try to improve the public school and what we were offering um in competition with some charters and privatization that was happening here in Arizona.
00:04:51
Speaker
um Fast forward, I was working with and NAU at the Arizona K-12 Center and met the incredible stylings of Dave Greenberg and Kyle Surrett, and really discovered that community schools was a national movement that was happening.
00:05:05
Speaker
We always joke, nobody goes to school to be a community school coordinator or a principal at or an educator at. So what what does it look like? And it looks different in every location. And so I got to work with Dave and Kyle, trying to figure out how we could best support folks from coast to coast, border to border, as they were starting to unpack the community school strategy.
00:05:26
Speaker
So I learned about community schools when I was teaching high school history in New Mexico. And we initiated, along with many other partners throughout New Mexico, a statewide community school initiative in 2019, New Mexico Pasta Community School Act. and launched an additional hundred schools throughout the state.
00:05:53
Speaker
And then after ah supporting those schools, I was able to come to NEA and support the work nationally. ah in Now we're working with places like California that just launched 2,500 new community schools and schools and everywhere in between. So it's it's really an honor. Angelina and I feel like we have the best jobs in our building because we get to work for schools that we really care about. And and we're not just having to play defense against all the dark and terrible things that are facing public education today.
Expansion of Community Schools in Chicago
00:06:37
Speaker
And no exploration of the community schools model would be complete without including the story of sustainable community schools in Chicago. Just last year, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a near doubling of the number of community schools in the city, bringing that number to 36.
00:06:55
Speaker
I spoke with foundational community organizer, advocate, and elected Chicago Public Schools board member G2 Brown about how organizing for sustainable community schools defused the push by elected officials for school closures, privatization, and the charterization of Chicago Public Schools.
00:07:14
Speaker
For g two the title of school board member may be new, but he's Chicago born and raised, and he's been organizing around education and all of its related issues since the 90s.
00:07:25
Speaker
I am G2 Brown, born and raised on that on Chicago, actually raised on south side of Chicago. Lives on the west side since 2006. In Chicago, most African Americans live on either the west side or the south side.
00:07:43
Speaker
I began working with young people in 1991, 1992 as a volunteer with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. began to run youth leadership programs in several public schools, ah focusing on leadership development, Black history, mentorship, and really built close relationships with a lot of teachers and learn based off administrators really pulling me closer to the school, like i going to staff development meetings, having our curriculum be part of the students' grades.
00:08:20
Speaker
One principal gave me my own classroom, and I was meeting with young people like three days a week. This really gained a lot of insight in regards to how schools work, but then also the equity issues in Chicago Public Schools.
00:08:38
Speaker
I became the community school coordinator at Chicago's first high school that was a community school, which is South Shore School of Entrepreneurship. I did that for about six years from 1998 to 2005, 2006. In I joined the the staff of the Oakland Community Organization as the education organizer.
00:09:02
Speaker
My path has been one of community organizing, not just around education issues, around youth investment, around fighting to save hospitals, you know holding slumlords accountable for how they treat single citizens in senior homes.
00:09:20
Speaker
And I bring that energy to the school board.
Challenges and Future of Community Schools
00:09:23
Speaker
And the main reason I wanted to run, and when people asked me to, is because I recognize that For us to move things on this board, there's going to have to be people that they can't take in the back room and cut a deal with.
00:09:38
Speaker
Right. And and and I'm far from perfect. But one thing I am is to see it. And people know my history. And so we we have it we have the majority of the voting's lot.
00:09:49
Speaker
We've been able to do some incredible things in this year, albeit with a lot of resistance. While there were just hundreds of community schools in the United States 15 years ago, today there are over 5,000 and growing in nearly every state in the nation.
00:10:05
Speaker
One consistent refrain from every person I spoke with for this episode was that community schools are the future of public education and the alternative to narratives about failing public schools that favor privatization as a solution.
00:10:21
Speaker
I asked Dave and Angelia at the NEA about what makes a community school a community school, what makes them different from typical public schools, and why they work to address the challenges faced by our public education system.
00:10:35
Speaker
The idea of the community school model is that you have a voice. There is a space for students to help inform what's happening, for parents and caregivers to help inform community members at large. And and community looks different in every location. If you're a rural district covering 200 miles or an urban core covering just a couple of miles, right? um It really does look different. And that's the beauty of the community school strategy is that we're looking at improvement that is informed by those that are closest to the work that is happening and also needs to happen, looking at assets and looking at the priorities that we want to disrupt. And when we are supporting our our buildings, um our community schools throughout the country, Dave and I are encouraging folks to take a holistic approach to improvement, looking at the assets that can be leveraged from within to help disrupt priorities that have been identified and disrupt priorities
00:11:32
Speaker
in in a way that leads to transformation rather than continuing to try to plug the holes in the dam, if you will, really trying to look for ways to transform what's happening and get to a space where folks not only have opportunities available to them, but can access them and can make the most of what those opportunities are.
00:11:53
Speaker
just to pick up on what you were sharing earlier, like there's a bit of a PR challenge with community schools and that the work the term community schools means a lot of different things to different people.
00:12:05
Speaker
So some people just think of it as like a sort of you know a neighborhood school or a school in the in the neighborhood or the local school down the street. There's a lot of districts that have community schools in the name, but but just to pick up on what Angelia said, like the quick and dirty definition we use is that community schools transform, it's a strategy to transform traditional public schools into neighborhood hubs that uplift the voices of students, staff, family, and community members. to co-create a vision for ah their public education system in their neighborhood.
00:12:47
Speaker
And so when Angela is talking about disrupting, we're disrupting the type of education that has unfortunately existed for um since since the beginning of mass public education in the country that's focused less on the ah human connection. And i that's why i love the this podcast, The Human Restoration Project. it's There's a trend that's, again, existed for over 100 years where the focus is not on what students, staff and family community want, but really on a top down
00:13:24
Speaker
vision that's rooted in control and compliance and efficiency and sort of this idea of the banking model of education and how can we jam facts into kids heads so i think we're interrupting that paradigm ah to uplift the the voices of all interest holders and to kind of break down the wall between school as sort of like this institution set apart from community, break down the wall between schools and community to bridge with all the local assets and community resources that exists in the neighborhood.
00:14:02
Speaker
Just one thing to add is that as we are really kind of at this pivotal moment in public education, just deciding who we want to help make the decisions, right? That best, who we want to make the decisions about what's happening in our classrooms and how it's happening, what's happening at our school sites, how our school sites to Dave's point are functioning as a hub and what that means and just finding a way for folks to be able to be unapologetically and and unapologetically unafraid to share their voice and to help meet those needs, but really understand that community schools is not a deficit strategy. It's not a deficit model. It is looking about the strengths. It is looking to the strengths that we all possess and how we bring those forward.
00:14:53
Speaker
There's so many opportunities and so many stories that we can lift up. um We've had the privilege of working with sites um since 2016, 2017, and documenting the work that's been happening. um For one instance, ah you know,
00:15:09
Speaker
like looking at teacher shortage, right? um It's definitely a thing. It's not a shortage of qualified folks, but it's a shortage of folks that are willing to work in these conditions and teachers working conditions are our students learning conditions. So how do we go about improving those knowing that there's a finite amount of funding available or support available? And so one key element of the community school strategy is the needs and assets assessment or assets and needs assessment that folks conduct to really bring those elements that Dave spoke to to the forefront, to bring the strengths, to bring the needs, to to identify priorities and collaboratively move forward with those ah on those elements. And so we've seen in places where community school strategy is done well and is truly embracing a collaborative model, we see that there is a greater retention of educators within a building or within a system. um There's also folks that really do want to move from maybe the educator to a systems leader or to a site leader, right, and stay connected to that collaborative process because they see this as a way of doing things differently rather than parachuting in experts from outside who may not be as connected or as invested. And then we also are seeing since COVID Everyone has had a huge focus on student attendance. and In our community schools, we continue to see improved attendance. and We can tell you that the common denominator tends to be relationships. It looks different for every site. We can't tell you what carrot or what's still like what punishment, what reward, what thing is working because those don't work.
00:16:50
Speaker
But what does work is deeply connecting with families and students, and having it be a relationship where they feel comfortable reaching out to say, hey, am my student's going to be absent for part of the day, they'll be there the second half of the day or making that effort to get them there. um Also in some districts um up in the in the Midwest area, we've seen secondary bus routes go into practice, right? Things of that nature where folks need to make a call or be in communication with one another for those systems improvements to actually have impact.
00:17:22
Speaker
And so those are those are two big disruptions that we tend to see with community schools. I would 100% echo what Angelia shared in that community schools work all across the country in these different contexts, rural, urban, East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, everywhere in between, because they are customized and locally driven based on the assets and and needs of each individual community. So like that phrase, you've seen one community school, you've seen one community school is ah is so important because it is locally driven and through the needs and asset assessment, really reflective of the different contexts of every community and every state.
00:18:11
Speaker
And so just to add to the examples that Angelia shared, like in in Anaheim, You know, we recently, we all know that immigration has been a big challenge ah for a lot of communities, especially border communities.
00:18:26
Speaker
And it came out as something that a lot of students and families were thinking about in the needs and asset assessment of some of the schools in Anaheim secondary i school district.
00:18:38
Speaker
And so they brought that directly into the classroom. The teachers had students do soapbox speeches about the immigration system, research the immigration system. And so taking concerns that are being voiced by student, staff, family, and community, and and directly ah making them part of the the school curriculum has been shown to be incredibly effective in engaging students and making school more relevant. And that's one of the kind of secret ingredients to why the community school strategy is so effective in all these different contexts that you named.
00:19:19
Speaker
So what does this look like on the ground for Kelly as a teacher leader at Hoover Community School?
Transformation at Hoover and Community Partnerships
00:19:24
Speaker
And how did Hoover manage the transition from a typical public school to the community school model, growing community partnerships and transforming themselves into a neighborhood hub?
00:19:34
Speaker
It's really like a strategy that is focused on school improvement as well as community improvement. So we have these six pillars that guide our work. um Those pillars include positive learning environment, high quality curriculum, um extended learning opportunities, shared decision making.
00:19:59
Speaker
And then on top of that, there's four mechanisms that drive our work. And and that's the heart of it. and Because you could say like the six pillars, they align very well with like a Marzano instructional framework.
00:20:10
Speaker
But it's the four mechanisms that really drive the work, which is having a community school coordinator who works with parents, students, and staff, completing your needs-based assessments to identify what those challenges are, asset mapping, identifying all the assets that everyone brings into the community, staff, parents, students, community organizations and partners, neighbors in the community. And then the shared decision making power, like teams that make those decisions, they go through the needs assessments, they identify problems, and then they figure out what assets you can tap into to address those.
00:20:44
Speaker
And everyone like that shared decision making is like everyone is empowered. And There's no more so assuming. Like we dive deep. we have We have a survey, but then we also follow up conversation. So like our staff just recently, there was like one something about communication. And so we had to do a follow up because we needed to know more about the communication breakdown. So you're diving. You try to get like 80% of everyone to complete the initial survey questions. And then you go deeper with every group to find out really what it is. And then you like you do your like fishbone and what are those root causes and all that. So it's a lot of educational science. And it's just plan, do review, like study review, like over and over again. And then in the best part is like everyone's empowered to be a part of these problem solving teams.
00:21:32
Speaker
I think probably one of the biggest shifts was needing to step back and realize that we didn't know everything that we knew. And hearing, you know, like some of the challenges and that were, wow, like you just didn't know. Yeah.
00:21:51
Speaker
It's not openly shared. So learning some of those things, but then also recognizing, and I think the biggest mind shift is it's very easy to work in a Title I school with a large um population of students that qualify for English language services. to have a very deficit mindset about the communities and the families that you're working with and shifting that mindset to really think about all of the amazing resources that they bring in and to our schools every day and how can we tap into those talents that they have that we don't know because we weren't ever having those conversations.
00:22:28
Speaker
I think that was probably one of the biggest things was just shifting that mindset. um When we first adopted, there was also this idea that, well, our coordinator, they do the community school work. That's not us. But it's like, but no, like, it's all of us. We're all the Hoover community school. Like, if not one person does it, and the rest of us just go about like, we all have to have a say and making these decisions and working together and We all have something to bring to the table um that can benefit the whole group. So that was another challenge that we had.
00:22:59
Speaker
And then i think the conversations are different when you have like your PLC conversations. They're much more focused in on diving really deep in. And like, again, like, are there ways that we can bring in a community to help a partner to help in with, you know, bringing this? Is there something like, you know, when you're talking about, you know, we're talking about comprehension last night, like where are,
00:23:23
Speaker
those challenges, what do we need to do different? Because obviously part of comprehension is tapping into what type of prior knowledge you have already. Like how can we help build up some, you know, how can we enrich what we're doing? So I think some conversations very different in some ways.
00:23:38
Speaker
My day-to-day job isn't any different, which some people like think that, Oh, because you know, you do this, like, You know, we have this title of community school, but it's not as a strategy is there our approach of doing things versus um this bells and whistle because what Hoover looks like is going to look different than what a school down the street that has a community school is going to look like because it's all about what that particular community needs.
00:24:03
Speaker
Some of our partnerships are helping provide transportation for students to and get from school. um Some partnerships are also focused on extracurricular activities that our students didn't have opportunities to. So um there's a big soccer league here in Cedar Rapids, and a lot of our families are all about the soccer. The kids love soccer. That's their sport.
00:24:27
Speaker
And so they a partner is helping us be able to get our kids into that big soccer league. and They are phenomenal soccer players. So some of that is also, you know, providing some after-school tutoring. Some of it is also we have a partnership, which is just really, really incredible, trying to, like, stabilize housing. So there is a church that helps support um that they will help with the deposit for an apartment for a family that has um become homeless. And then once they're stable and they're moved into the a place to live for that deposit, then, you know, they pay back that deposit, you know, that deposit money. So that way, then they can, you know, help the next person. But it's, you know, it's not like, oh, you mean I need it like next month. Like it's over a tiered, you know, so many months that they have to pay that back.
00:25:15
Speaker
So, you know, that's something like, you know, who would have thought that we can help, you know, stabilize the housing and find a partner that would help, you know, because down payments are on rental properties are very, um expensive, whether it's an apartment or a house. um So that's, you know, a unique one. We have a health fair or not a health fair. We have this resource centered. So we have various um organizations to help out with health and um financial planning that come once a month for ah families to come and tap into those. We have Iowa Legal Aid in our building twice oh twice a month, maybe.
00:25:48
Speaker
i think it's twice a month. um So it all very depends on you know, what needs we're trying to help address, um what those community partners are. and We have another church that basically runs our food pantry for us. and they will We have families that the parents work third shift so they can't come themselves, so they will do deliveries to the homes from the food pantry, which is amazing.
00:26:14
Speaker
So there's just a wide variety of different, I don't even think I even know half of the partners that we have and what they all do because we've really just expanded a lot of our different partnerships. For G2 Brown in Chicago, the growth of sustainable community schools is tied to racial justice movements fighting to improve the lives of black people and communities in Chicago.
00:26:35
Speaker
That includes housing, policing, medical care, and education. As G2 explains, the early fight for community schools was the antidote to school closures and privatization pushed by elected officials and outsiders who saw racial inequities as an opportunity for profits.
00:26:53
Speaker
Now, one of the things that happened in the process of winning an elected school board and then also winning the mayor's seat is that we pushed for Chicago to become a sustainable community school district because we understood that everywhere where the charter industry has taken root, the black population has plummeted.
00:27:13
Speaker
Every city without exception. And so the charter expansion is really about remaking urban landscapes, right? And so it's we were very clear that we want to invest in neighborhood schools by ah providing them the opportunity to become a sustainable community school with the high school as the hub of a sustainable community school village, which includes the feeder school.
00:27:41
Speaker
So ah there's a lot of excitement. We added and just added 17 new sustainable community schools this year. There's a fierce resistance. ah to what we're doing from the privatization community because they've been using the Chicago public schools budget, which is $10 billion, dollars as a pig's truck for the last 40 years, right?
00:28:03
Speaker
Enriching themselves, ignoring inequities, shutting down. that You know, they've closed over 161 schools in Chicago. It's not just the 50 schools that Rahm Emanuel closed. Over 160 schools have closed in the city.
00:28:17
Speaker
And never dealing with the fact that the the big problem of public education in Chicago is that children that were black and brown had a completely different reality than children that were white, which is why none of those schools closed.
00:28:31
Speaker
Because parents are satisfied. And they should be satisfied. But not at the expense of sacrificing you know other children's schools, other community schools.
00:28:43
Speaker
So we know that The community school model works. There's boatloads of research that that that that supports that fact. One of the the best pieces is from the Learning Policy Institute with Linda Darling-Hammond and her group.
00:29:00
Speaker
They've studied community schools in New York. They've studied community schools in Cincinnati. They've studied community schools in California. um So we know that this model works.
00:29:10
Speaker
And it's really simple. Communities know what they need. Schools are community institutions. You have to have the political will to do it. And what were fate what we're we're seeing now, especially today, with the stripping of the Voting Rights Act, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, we understand that there is an element you know there' is an unrecon an unreconciled disease in America that has never diminished,
00:29:42
Speaker
that has never been healed, that has never been confronted. And that's racism. Racism is interwoven and an essential component of America's DNA.
00:29:53
Speaker
And because there's never been any accountability for the evil that's been done, there hasn't really been any transformation. So now we are seeing the erosion of voting rights, just like we've seen the sabotage of public education.
00:30:08
Speaker
And so in order for us to truly achieve what one says of real democracy, we have to be honest about the landscape that we're dealing with, right?
Community Vision and Racial Justice
00:30:22
Speaker
So let me give a little history around just specifically the sustainable community schools model. So when I was an organizer with the Kenwood Oakley Community Organization, my executive director, Jay Travis, I was doing a project where I was i was on the local school councils, the local school governing body at Dyer High School for 10 years.
00:30:43
Speaker
Arne Duncan had just closed a school called Inglewood, which is in a ah community to the south of where we are. And they and and dumped a thousand children in four different high schools.
00:30:56
Speaker
These young people come from different neighborhoods. Violence exploded at school. So, of course, we had to, and and and a lot of those children came to die. So, Jay, I was doing something called the school alignment process, where I was meeting with all the feeder schools and trying and and building vertical and horizontal curriculum alignment.
00:31:19
Speaker
ah and and and also ways for the schools to connect. So local school councils at the different schools training we together, them parent advisory counseling, different schools training together, high school students mentoring the elementary students, just trying to build connection because as Chicago was strength was transitioning into a choice district, a portfolio district, the notion of feeder schools was disappearing, right? And so my executive director was like, what you're doing is good But they had just come from a meeting where they saw the plans for the Obama Presidential Center.
00:31:56
Speaker
And it was in the same location with Diet High foods what bad high School. So she was like, they're coming for this school. You've you've got to build a community vision. And so I knew that the the full service community school model is good.
00:32:12
Speaker
But what it tends to do is limit the community's input to after school activities. So it was my responsibility to sort of develop a model that actually looked at curriculum, that looked at wraparound supports,
00:32:29
Speaker
that looked at teacher supports, that looked at how to create a student-centered school climate. So I'm using that word instead of it discipline, right? Because to me saying student discipline is already a negative connotation.
00:32:43
Speaker
But if you say a student-centered school climate, you're also talking about what type of leadership development opportunities should be available to young people in schools? The human development, and that includes how to hold them accountable when they make mistakes, right?
00:32:58
Speaker
And so and then also what what is what is like real parenting community transformative parenting community engagement and look like? And finally, what does an inclusive school leader look like?
00:33:08
Speaker
ah A school leader, a principal that that values the the input and the wisdom and the skills of the entire school community and does not operate as a dictator, but operates as a master facilitator, right?
00:33:23
Speaker
And so these were the six pillars. My responsibility was to really build excitement. So i talked to a few thousand people in the Bronzeville community And we built the the first iteration of the plan. It was called the Bronzeville Global Achievers Village. It was diet and six of his feeder schools.
00:33:39
Speaker
So we went back to the community. We shared the plan. People were excited. Then we developed a design team. Schools like Diet High School, thoroughly documented in Eve Ewing's book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard, were at the center of this fight and have since become a centerpiece of the sustainable community schools movement.
00:33:59
Speaker
Now, in the midst of this, just despite the fact that Diet had the largest increase in students going to college and all of Chicago public schools, it had the largest decrease in arrests and suspensions, were arrest and suspensions We have just won the ESPN Rising Award. So we got a $4 million dollars ah renovation to our athletics facility.
00:34:18
Speaker
And the next year they voted to phase our school out. By phase out, that means they stopped taking freshmen, right, until no children were left. And they were bribing children to get them to leave early.
00:34:30
Speaker
We'll give you, you know, or free bus pass. We'll let you get into this school. We'll let you get into that school. And so a lot of children left until the last year. It was 13 children. All 13 of them were COCO youth leaders.
00:34:45
Speaker
They were youth leaders with COCO. They refused to leave. They were called to die at 13. So these young people are the ones that really energized.
00:34:55
Speaker
The young people are ones that really energized to fight for die at high school. Um, so them fighting that, the earlier expressions of them, I'm going back to like 2012, these young people filed Title VI civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Education.
00:35:13
Speaker
Um, they did press conferences, they did actions, they, you know, that they these young people were like, again, these were, these were Cocoa youth, so they were, um,
00:35:26
Speaker
already politicized and and not parroted. They had their own analysis. They understood that what was happening to them was wrong and they inspired the community. So moving forward to the plan, um the community wanted this plan. We had to develop the design team, the design team using the five, at that time, five pillars,
00:35:48
Speaker
The design team ah pretty much designed a plan from 8 in the morning to 3.30 for diet and all six of his feeder schools. And the community began to fight for that plan.
00:36:00
Speaker
Rahm Emanuel resisted. ah We stopped going to the school board and we just started targeting the mayor. ah And we did everything from take over his press conferences, to chain ourselves to the statue outside of his office, ah march 700 people to his house.
00:36:19
Speaker
ah But despite all of that, it was having minimal effect on him. So as a community organizer, we had to say, OK, this is our target. He's a person can give us what we want. How do we move him?
00:36:30
Speaker
And so we realized that because Rahm Emanuel was corporate and his power didn't come from his control of the alderman, it came from his corporate money. We had to do something that would make Goldman Sachs, that would make the New York Times, that would make those type of interests, the Wall Street Journal question it.
00:36:50
Speaker
And so that's when the idea of a hunger strike as a tactic came up. So we we had done all these town hall meetings. The community wanted the plan.
00:37:01
Speaker
Different people that was looking at the plan said it was one of the best academic plans they'd ever seen.
Historic Victory at Diet High School
00:37:07
Speaker
American Education Research Association, American Federation of Teachers, ju ah ah Linda Darling-Hammond. And people were really like, this this why aren't you supporting this? This is an activated community that has a beautiful vision for their schools.
00:37:23
Speaker
ah And CPS said, they did they pretty much said, we're not going to support the plan. So on August 17, 2015, 12 of two thousand and fifteen twelve of us um launched the hunger strike to save diet at high school.
00:37:38
Speaker
The hunger strike lasted 34 days and we won. i'll It's the first closed school because it by that time the school had actually closed. The 13 students had graduated.
00:37:50
Speaker
But it was reopened as an open enrollment neighborhood school with $16 million dollars in new investments. And last year they won the state championship in basketball. So um it was a huge victory.
00:38:04
Speaker
And it it really, to me, killed school closings in Chicago. Elected officials would come into office and they knew that this was a third rail issue. and But it also helped to energize the fights on the elected school board because as we starved in Washington Park, all of Chicago had to look at the fact that that that we lived in two different cities.
00:38:27
Speaker
There was one reality for us and there was a reality for people that didn't look like us.
00:38:33
Speaker
While the impact on Chicago communities and families seems self-evident, community schools face the uphill climb of how to measure and communicate that success and the impact of their model in the era of great schools and school rankings that look at a narrow slice of test scores, graduation rates, and AP enrollment.
00:38:54
Speaker
It does, but we have a lot of families that they start out at Hoover, and because of everything that we do at Hoover, and they do feel like Hoover is So important to their family that they permit in. So a couple of years ago, I had a student that moved to Marion, which is a good 20 minutes away from my school. Yeah. the Mid-year, and the parents like, no, we're staying at Hoover. So they permitted in. um We do have families that permit in from surrounding districts as well, not just within our own um school district, but um other school districts are permitting into our school because it's a special place. and When people come and they sub or they visit, they're like, this is just a very special place. It's not what you think about and you envision when you think of a school that is, you know, 97% frame reduced and, you know over-
00:39:46
Speaker
like 45% of students receiving English language services, um you know, were predominantly ah non-white students. Like it's not what you see. And I was actually at a conference and they're like, you know who all teaches at a Taiwan school? And I'm like, you know' raising their hand and who's all whatever. And I was just like, it was the only one not raising my hand.
00:40:05
Speaker
they're like, well, what, Like why? I'm like, well, my school has adopted the community school model. So we've been working like we have the best staff retention rate and the district.
00:40:15
Speaker
ah We have like the best student absenteeism rate and the district. And that wasn't what my school was like when I first started. was a very transient population. We have very our population is very much stabilized kids that we have in kindergarten. Most of them are there when they leave for fifth grade.
00:40:31
Speaker
So. um It's very powerful to see like how, yes, the community partners are there, but like you can't just, the community partners are not enough. Like there's more to it than just having community partners.
00:40:44
Speaker
Sending home food every week with kids is not enough. Like it's also what we do with those six pillars, like how they all work together. And that was one the biggest eye-opening things when we went to Milwaukee to learn more about the community school model. Absolutely.
00:40:58
Speaker
their Their visual is very good and it um because it's Milwaukee and we know what Milwaukee is known for. It's finest beer, right? And so they had a visual about how like the best of the best where you get the the foam of the beer, but like the best. I'm not a beer drinker, so I don't know this. So I'm taking it forward. But it's like, what do those schools do that get the best results? Like why is that sets them apart? And that's what we're doing is those things, which is the strategy.
00:41:25
Speaker
You know, we see lots of families that, you know, with the financial literacy planning classes that they can take advantage of, you know, getting their first homes. We see um a lot of students, you know, the big thing was just seeing my, kindna well, there were preschoolers to begin with and then first grades, but now my kindergarten are seeing them still at Hoover when they're fifth graders. My first year, i was one of like nine new teachers. And now it's like, oh, we don't have any staff turnover unless they're retiring or they're moving away to be closer to family or for a job.
00:41:58
Speaker
you know and that there is huge because, you know, as you're having that revolving door of staff, it's really hard to make a dent in improving each student outcomes. Because you're constantly like, it's just new people in there. And I think that's been one of the nice things.
00:42:13
Speaker
Students are very happy. You know, they're healthy. They want to be at school. Parents come in and they greet you. they get They'll give you hugs. Like, conferences are just so thankful. And, you know, it's just, I think probably the best thing to hear, though, is whenever you hear about somebody being in the school and they say, wow, like, this is just such a special place. I've never...
00:42:37
Speaker
Other schools aren't like this. Like, you know, because as I said, when i first started, the reputation that my school had was not a good reputation. And, you know, we definitely had challenges. And it's just really nice to, think that's my biggest thing is that people want to come to my school to work. People want their child to be at our school.
00:42:54
Speaker
They choose to permit them in a lot, you know, of them choose to permit in to keep them at our school. So i think that's the biggest thing that came to fruition because that's what I always wanted.
00:43:05
Speaker
Like, it's a great place. These are great kids. These are great families. It's a great neighborhood. Like, lifting it up and like letting it shine. We need do better about that for all of our schools, but definitely those um that are demographics are more like mine.
00:43:19
Speaker
They're being down too much. We have been trying to gather data anecdotally and also through interviews from our community schools over the past several
Unique Strategies and Improvement Metrics
00:43:31
Speaker
years. Every spring, we try to host an interview followed up with some survey questions to collect qualitative and quantitative data about how the strategy is impacting um specific sites around the country. And so we've compiled what we are learning about what
00:43:50
Speaker
kind of post needs and asset or post assets and needs assessment, what can a community school do to really come together collaboratively around developing priorities and developing um continuous improvement or, you know, using improvement science principles to to move forward and take action around the priorities that have been identified. And what do those rapid cycles of improvement look like? We're no longer looking at 180 day school years, right? We're not just going to hang on for summative data or those satellite data pieces to come back, but we're looking at four to six week implementation cycles of improvement to see if we are moving the needle in some way, or if like the mile markers tell us we're moving in the right right direction to move the needle. So we have a guide that we have been developing with practitioners for the past three years. And there's also a collection at the end of that guide, to be honest with you, Nick, that talks about the different things that we're looking at. um And one of the things that Dave and I are really excited about right now is um kind of this new focus on community-based learning or community-centered learning and how that's starting to impact what teachers see or what educators see as a possibility within the teaching and learning space, how students are interacting with the teaching and learning space, the involvement of parents and community members to better inform. And so when we are thinking about how we want to share the message of how we get better, we are constantly having our schools think about what was what was the current state of the of the priority or of the asset that you wanted to you know better understand through this model?
00:45:32
Speaker
What was it that you did to take action around that? what What were those actions? And then what are the qualitative and quantitative pieces that came out of that action? And knowing that for some folks, um they want something and as close to a white paper as possible. That's not what we're doing here, but they want as much data as possible. And then other folks, how do we create the infographic to drive home the impact that this has holistically on students, on educators, on families and our communities? And so really looking at ways that we measure this. And like Dave said, if you've seen one community school, you've seen one community school. So I can't say that community school A is going to look like B is going to look like C, D or E.
00:46:11
Speaker
But there are elements that are showing improvement. And so it's being able to share with our network of community schools across the country what we're doing, how we're doing it, and continuing to use the model to uplift the new pieces that we want to continue to seek improvement around.
00:46:30
Speaker
I love that and and second that, would what Angelia said. I would say two things ah in addition. One, i i really feel like we're so grateful to have evaluation partners like the Learning Policy Institute, like we talked about, RAND, who know how to do deep, rigorous research as a, cause you can do so many things with numbers, right? And we see that being manipulated all the time, but we have folks that are doing real serious studies of community schools and showing results like in the LPI study that, you know, community schools are reducing chronic absenteeism by 30% more more than their similar ah ah schools and reducing suspensions by 15% more and that the results are concentrated ah with traditionally marginalized students and families. So we have partners that are showing
00:47:32
Speaker
the evidence that this is working. But to, I think what Anjali talking about and into your question, Nick, community schools give us the opportunity to think outside of just the traditional metrics that we've been using to assess educational progress, because we know from No Child Left Behind and and a lot of the top-down reforms that we've seen, that when we just focus on reading and math scores,
00:47:56
Speaker
there's a whole slew of ah unintended consequences around narrowing the curriculum. One study that I just read that blew my mind was, I don't know if this is common knowledge, but schools were actually in the height of the No Child Left Behind crazed, they were kind of carbo loading their kids in the cafeteria meals, like serving them more pasta and carbs the day before the test to try to, you know, like every shortcut that schools could take to boost these scores, they would do
00:48:30
Speaker
And that's not the kind of education system we want. We, it's Parents and students loudly have said they don't just want to test, prep, drill and kill style ah education that's not really um it's not really learning. It's not preparing students to be democratic ah contributors to our society. So community schools gives us the opportunity to think more holistically about what success looks like and to bring in the voices of students, staff, family, and community members to define what success looks like for them and their community and their context.
00:49:05
Speaker
Now, if you've made it this far and want to know more about how to transition your school to a community school, Kelly has a few lessons to share from that transition at Hoover, and the NEA has resources to support you.
00:49:18
Speaker
I've included links in the show notes along with Dave and Angelia's emails if you want to reach out directly. Well, the first lesson learned was when you're the only school doing the model in your district, you you really don't know what you're doing. um And there's no one else to really piggyback. So it's nice that we've had some resources um along the way to help us um through the NEA.
00:49:43
Speaker
So like our first two coordinators, you know, the first one, we didn't know what like what should be happening, like what's all going on, you know, and i had really great ideas, really put some nice things in place with certain like our food pantry definitely shifted from the backpack home to nope, you come in making sure that we had food that um parents would want to actually eat and feed their children because very culturally diverse.
00:50:07
Speaker
And then like our second one, we redid our model and logo just things. And now we're on our third one. And that's um Just those learning pains. It's okay to change your coordinator. You may not have the right fit to start with. So that's one big thing. Another thing is you have to really ah work to make sure that people aren't getting the idea. Well, that's their job. The model is just this person. And I just like really embracing that is all of us working together, and that we're all
00:50:38
Speaker
The community school model, not just a person. The time, like it's, you know, the things don't shift, happen overnight. It's not a magic bullet where, you know, year one, you're going these great, you know, things and there can still be bumps in the road, you know, along the way. um So not being complacent because it's very easy to get complacent.
00:50:56
Speaker
but recognizing that it's going to take time. um They say that, you know, really in years five to seven, after adopting the model, that's when you really start seeing the results taking off.
00:51:08
Speaker
And, you know, that's what our trajectory has been. um You know, the first couple of years we changed, I think within three years, we had three different coordinators, which was fine. We just didn't have the right person at that time.
00:51:20
Speaker
And so I think those are the big things. Well, this is definitely where i we come in, Nick. We, Angelina and I, are so lucky to be able to support this work full time with NEA. And really, it is our jobs to support anyone around the country who's interested in starting the community school strategy, getting it off the ground, implementing it according to the research.
00:51:48
Speaker
ah We're really fortunate to be in a position where NEA has invested in a community school implementation institute that we ah co-lead where we can provide that kind of support. So folks can reach out to us and we can help. We do presentations to raise awareness of what community schools is. raise awareness of the best practices and then we support once a school has like a team of folks that understand the strategy or a district has a team the idea we encourage them to spread the word and raise more awareness amongst students staff family and community members and then when
00:52:26
Speaker
There's a critical mass of folks in the district who understand the strategy, who are engaged in it. Then we provide support with creating a formal agreement with districts and students that family and community groups to develop what we call like a district wide steering committee or implementation team.
00:52:46
Speaker
And that's the group that really thinks about things like funding and an application process for where what community schools, um what that looks like, who who should apply, where should resources be targeted and what's the rollout strategy and plan and how do we how do we define success?
00:53:03
Speaker
And those are all things that Angelia and i support districts and sites with across the country. And we have lots of different opportunities for learning. And we just encourage folks to connect with us. And it's an open application process. It's on the NEA website. you can also email us. We'd be happy to share our email addresses.
00:53:23
Speaker
And this is what we get to do all day. I appreciate Dave really framing what the fertile environment is for community school strategy, like a successful launch. Because again, just a reminder, community school strategy is not a program. Dave and I are not going to put a binder in the mail and send anyone, you know, like the guide to. This is going to be something that is ah developed with folks.
00:53:46
Speaker
So just continuing to start thinking about what are we doing with one another and not what are we going to do to any group that we are serving through our public school resources. And also on our um community school page on the NEA website, there's also a five step. So kind of highlights what Dave just kind of framed in a pictorial, like just a few words, but kind of helps folks think through um what are those right next steps as you're looking to build, like Dave said, that that mass that critical mass around this around the strategy around implementing this model in your local context.
Defense Against Privatization and Call to Action
00:54:25
Speaker
And finally, g two Brown sees the future of public education in the expansion of community schools as a bulwark against privatization regimes that push vouchers, school closures, and the charterization of our public school system.
00:54:43
Speaker
since 1995, before No Child Left Behind, the corporate community had been setting up the takeover of public education, right? So Paul Vallis in Chicago put over 160 schools on probation, began opening up magnet schools, selective enrollment schools, which poached the top performing students out of neighborhood schools.
00:55:08
Speaker
Then says, now your schools are failing. Arnie Duncan came in and and and yo you know and and he began shutting down schools. Then Barbara Burr-Bennett came in and she dealt with some people who viewed as the death blow.
00:55:22
Speaker
But all of that, vouchers, the expansion of charter school, online school, all of these is someone else's vision. We maintain that sustainable community schools, which basically means community control of schools. That's all it means.
00:55:42
Speaker
Sustainable community schools is the future of public gets education. If we unite around that idea, around the continent, we don't want outsiders in our communities telling us what's best for our children.
00:55:54
Speaker
Ain't nobody going love you better than you. And so why would we hand our children over to to to to these interests that have proven, undoubtedly they've proven we can't trust them.
00:56:09
Speaker
But when what I learned is that people will fight for what they helped to do. So people that were not activists, people that were not organizers, mamas, grandmamas, fathers,
00:56:22
Speaker
You know, people got involved in that fight for diet because our superpower is nobody goes to Miss Jones and Mr. Jones and says, what's your vision of a better world? And mean it.
00:56:34
Speaker
And mean it. And so believe that this is something that we need to unite around all of us that are organizing around education justice.
00:56:48
Speaker
Thank you again and for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:56:59
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.