Education and Community Building: Connecting Two Worlds

A Forum — October 12, 2001

Education reform seeks to strengthen schools so that every child succeeds academically. Community building encompasses a variety of approaches that mobilize residents and organize coalitions to build the community's social, physical, economic, and political infrastructure. Ideally, these ideas and reforms are mutually reinforcing, compelling schools and community groups to work collectively to benefit children and families. However, schools and community builders, relying on different organizational cultures and occupying distinct roles and frames of reference, often suffer from disconnectedness.

Drawing from the Institute for Educational Leadership's (IEL) recent publication Education and Community Building: Connecting Two Worlds, Martin Blank, Director of Community Collaboration for IEL, discussed starting points and sticking points for collaboration between community builders and schools. The publication is the result of a study to determine how community builders and education leaders can work together more effectively, and draws from interviews and conversations with community builders and school leaders in Chula Vista, CA Elementary School District; the Germantown Settlement Multi-Purpose Agency in Philadelphia, PA; the Logan Square Neighborhood Association in Chicago, IL; and the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization in Washington, DC.

Among the starting points for school/community collaboration is the common need to build stronger schools, build communities, and build bridges that support the most beneficial type of collaborations-those that combine insider expertise with outside resources and supports. Sticking points that often arise from inside/outside differences of schools and community building-organizations are typically their respective: organizational structures and cultures; criteria used to determine leadership; perspectives on the role of schools and schooling; levels and expectations of accountability; views on power, race and class; and definitions of collaboration and the extent to which they value or devalue conflict.

Against this backdrop, Nancy Aardema, Executive Director of Chicago's Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), and Amanda Rivera, Principal of Ames Middle School in Chicago, shared their story of community building through school and community collaborations.

LSNA is a 39-year old community organization on the northwest side of Chicago that works with neighborhood families to sustain and improve the economically and ethnically diverse community. Collectively, LSNA represents thousands of residents, families and stakeholders in the community. Its members include 47 schools, churches, block clubs, agencies, community based organizations, union locals and multi-unit apartment buildings. LSNA has been in the forefront of strengthening local schools and bringing positive changes in student achievement through increased parent and community involvement. As a community builder, Aardema believes that organized people are able to create strong vital communities, which meet the needs of all residents.

In collaboration with its members, LSNA has developed a neighborhood plan focused on: creating safe and affordable housing; deepening parent involvement; and creating school-community learning centers. The parent involvement strategy focuses on Parent/Teacher Mentoring-developing parents as leaders in the home, the school and the community. Parents complete LSNA training and commit to work 2000 hours in the classroom. Since the program started eight years ago, 840 parents have participated in the program, providing over 110,000 volunteer hours.

The strategy of creating school community learning centers began as a community response to overcrowding and the need for a new school building in the neighborhood. Aardema and Rivera worked together with other administrators, teachers and parents to address these issues. Through collective action, they convinced the Board of Education to build two new middle schools and additions at five elementary schools. Parent leaders then did research, going door to door, asking "If we got a new school, what would you want in it?" An overwhelming majority (about 80 percent) said adult education.

The school community learning centers were conceived as a way of connecting community agencies and schools, and providing educational programs for children and adults. They are largely parent-developed and governed, and have become places for people to congregate, study English, learn about their children's education, and study with them in the after-school hours. "There are cases where whole families are getting their GED together and youth are experiencing the value of these experiences for themselves and their families," said Aardema. She also indicated that, "In Chicago, a lot of political and education careers are built and crashed on test scores." As a result, the arts and recreation have been pushed out of the school day. The centers are a way of rounding out the lives and experiences of neighborhood children and adults. Additionally, the majority of adult education degrees offered off college campuses in Cooke County are starting to come from the Logan Square centers. That is because the centers are able to provide the security, childcare, support and coordination with other services that adults need to make progress in their own lives.

Currently there are five community learning centers serving 1,400 families per week. The learning centers were initially funded with a MacArthur Foundation planning grant, but are now funded by city government. Through LSNA's initiative, the Chicago Board of Education now has a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant. Sustainability-particularly, funding for new buildings and providing the operating expenses of programs and centers-are issues that ultimately must be addressed by local government.

Rivera was selected as principal of Ames Middle School, one of the schools recently built in the Logan Square Neighborhood, through the active lobbying of the community for a school leader who was prepared to address the needs of the whole community. The school has 900 students in grades 6, 7 and 8, of which 90 percent are Latino. Because the school was new, Rivera was able to select all her teachers (as opposed to having them assigned from the central district office) and as a result has been able to create a team-based, interdisciplinary learning approach that supports the middle-school philosophy. She also has the ability to keep the building open longer, though funding for extended time is always a problem.

Together, the administration and teachers have instituted looping (groups of students remain with a particular teacher for more than one year), which allows teachers to get to really know their students and families, and ensures more consistent adult connections for the student. A planning process has been initiated between the school and the center that has eliminated the disconnect between the day and evening programs by aligning curricula and activities. With a planning grant, teachers piloted a unit on the community that has been aligned with state and Chicago Public School Standards. Rivera concedes that test scores are not "that good" but her students are making improvements and progress toward specific benchmarks. She recognizes that educational accountability is a big issue in Chicago, but that she also wants her students to be whole individuals, understanding where they fit in the world, and to learn social responsibility.

Barbara McCloud, Associate Director, School Leadership for the 21st Century Initiative at IEL, concluded the presentations by providing the following rules of engagement for schools and community-building organizations derived from the findings of the IEL study:

• Find out about each other's interests and needs.

• Reach out to potential partners on their own turf with specific offers of assistance. 

• Spell out the purpose and terms of joint efforts, including who will do what and when. 

• Work out the kinks as they arise and change your approach when necessary. 

• Build out from success by sharing positive results, encouraging expanded efforts, celebrating success and engaging others to become part of the process.

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