How the Community School Model Supports Whole Child Education
As school and district leaders, you’re constantly balancing the immediate needs of your students with long-term goals for academic achievement and community well-being. One increasingly popular strategy that aims to meet all of those needs is the community school model.
Implementing a community school is a powerful but complex shift in how a school operates, how decisions are made, and how relationships with families and the community are nurtured.
At Partners in School Innovation, we’ve had the privilege of walking alongside school and district teams as they explore and implement this model. In this article, we offer a grounded definition of what a community school is, unpack some of the most common misconceptions we hear in the field, and share key insights for leaders looking to move from vision to action.
What Is a Community School?
A community school is a comprehensive strategy that brings together a school’s resources, relationships, and leadership to support the success of students, families, and the broader community. It’s not a curriculum or a one-off initiative, but instead, a long-term approach to transforming how schools serve the communities that surround their students (Coalition for Community Schools; Learning Policy Institute, 2017).
What Makes a Community School?
Community school models are built around a vision of supporting the whole child, not just academically, but socially, emotionally, and physically.
This vision comes to life through four key pillars, outlined in the Community Schools Forward framework (2023). When implemented together, these pillars create the foundation for sustainable, transformative change.
As you explore each pillar, I will also share a few field examples from our work at Partners in School Innovation. These real-world stories show how schools are putting these ideas into action, and what is possible when the right conditions are created.
Source: Learning Policy Institute (2023), Community Schools Forward’s Essentials for Community School Transformation . View at learningpolicyinstitute.org
Pillar 1: Integrated Student Supports: Meeting the Needs of the Whole Child
This pillar focuses on removing barriers to learning by addressing the out-of-school challenges students may face. This could include access to physical and mental health services, housing support, or food security.
The goal here is really to identify what out-of-school challenges might be affecting your student’s ability to be present and learn in school. The goal here isn’t just to provide a service, but to create a system that identifies and responds to student needs early and holistically.
At its best, integrated support is embedded in the school culture, where educators and staff work alongside counselors, social workers, and community partners to ensure students and families feel seen, supported, and connected. When this kind of support is offered and available, it lays the groundwork for real whole child development.
Pillar 2: Enriching the Whole Child With Expanding Learning Opportunities
Another characteristic of community schools is that they extend learning outside of the traditional bell schedule. Examples of this could be after-school programs, summer learning programs, arts and enrichment activities, or community-based internship and learning activities.
When students engage in culturally relevant, hands-on experiences that reflect their interests and strengths, they’re more likely to be excited about learning. This pillar is also an opportunity to bring in community voices and expertise to enrich the educational experience in ways that are locally rooted, responsive, and expose students to the magic that is present in their own communities.
Pillar 3: Active Family and Community Engagement
Community schools implement processes and ways to invite students, families, and community members as true partners in shaping a school’s direction. This pillar is all about inviting collaboration and shared decision-making, recognizing that students, as well as their families and surrounding community, bring important wisdom about students’ lives, needs, and strengths.
Effectively engaging all of a school’s community members happens when schools intentionally build trust, create inclusive spaces for input, and communicate regularly and transparently. It’s a shift from doing for families to doing with families.
An example of this pillar in action can be found in our work with the East Side Alliance in San Jose. There, our coaches supported a network of schools in centering student voices by facilitating empathy interviews, surveys, and collaborative planning sessions. These practices helped educators deepen their understanding of student experiences, and opened up more authentic engagement with students and families.
Pillar 4: Collaborative Leadership and Practices
With so many people involved (students, families, educators, and community partners) it’s simply not realistic to expect one person or even a small leadership team to carry the full weight of a community school initiative. And truthfully, they shouldn’t have to.
That’s why collaborative leadership is so essential for the success of community school implementation. Community schools thrive when leadership is shared. When those who are closest to the work and most impacted by the outcomes have a voice in shaping decisions, that’s when we start to see real transformation.
In practice, this might mean forming cross-sector leadership teams, creating space for teacher leadership and collaboration, or including family and community members in goal-setting and planning. It also means building in time for shared professional learning for educators, community partners, and caregivers.
If you’re curious about what shared leadership structures can look like within a school, read this case study about our work with an intermediate school in San Jose. Working closely with the principal, our Partners coaches supported them with establishing shared leadership structures like climate and culture teams, teacher leadership teams, and consistent spaces for collaborative professional learning. This approach created the conditions for educators at every level to lead, contribute, and drive meaningful improvement.
At the heart of this pillar is a commitment to equity. Shared leadership ensures the work reflects the wisdom, needs, and aspirations of everyone it’s meant to serve.
An added bonus here is that when people feel ownership over the process, they’re more invested in the outcomes. That’s how you build something that lasts.
What Community Schools Are Not: Clearing Up Model Misconceptions
As community school models become more widespread, so do the misconceptions, and that’s completely understandable. Community school models are layered and complex, so it's easy to want to reduce them to simplified ideas that don’t reflect the full picture.
Here are a few common misconceptions we often hear in our work with school systems, and what we’ve learned through research and experience.
“It’s just a school with a health clinic or a couple of extra programs.”
It’s easy to assume that a community school is simply a traditional school with a few extra services added on. And while those services are often part of the model, they don’t capture the full picture.
A true community school provides support services while integrating them into a larger strategy for school transformation. That means aligning those services with the school’s academic goals, leadership structures, and community vision. Rather than just one-off programs, it’s more about reimagining how the school functions in partnership with families and the community to remove barriers and create the conditions where all students can thrive (Oakes, Maier, & Daniel, 2017).
In short, a school with services is not the same as a school centered on deep, strategic partnership and integrated support that is tailored to the unique context of a school community.
“There’s a one-size-fits-all model we can adopt.”
Community schools are, by design, rooted in a local context. There is no universal template. What works in one neighborhood may be misaligned in another. While frameworks like Community Schools Forward offer helpful guidance, they emphasize the importance of local vision, assets, and needs as the foundation for design and implementation.
Successful community schools prioritize continuous listening, collaborative leadership, and systems that evolve over time based on input from the community inside and outside of the school building.
“Implementing this is the community school coordinator’s job.”
While community school coordinators are critical facilitators, this work cannot (and should not) fall on one person. As mentioned before, effective community schools are built on shared vision, commitment, and leadership. Teachers, principals, students, families, and community partners all play meaningful roles in shaping priorities, leading initiatives, and making decisions.
Without this shared ownership, schools struggle to build the trust and collective understanding needed for lasting change.
How School and District Leaders Can Get Started (A High Level Guide)
Image Description: An infographic listing the ways that educational leaders can begin to implement a community school model. This includes steps like beginning to listen to their community, working with their community to create a shared vision, building systems, distributing leadership, and prioritizing relationships.
If you're exploring how to begin (or deepen) your community school strategy, here are a few guideposts we recommend. Our approach at Partners strongly complements multiple community school frameworks and closely aligns to Community Schools Forward’s “Framework: Essentials for Community School Transformation.”
1. Start With Listening
Before designing anything, make time to listen. Use empathy interviews, community surveys, or focus groups to understand what students, families, and educators care most about. This process surfaces not just needs, but hopes and potential collaborators too.
2. Co-Create a Shared Vision
Use what you learn to shape a compelling, shared vision. What does a thriving school look and feel like in your community? Make this vision visible and actionable by embedding it and keeping it visible during planning, team meetings, and communication.
3. Align Systems Around the Work
Ensure that your operational infrastructure (e.g. data systems, time for collaboration, and professional learning) is aligned to support your community school vision and efforts. Otherwise, even the best intentions can fizzle out from lack of capacity and consistency.
4. Distribute Leadership
We keep bringing this up because it’s that important. A range of stakeholders must be empowered to lead. This can include students, family members, educators, and community partners. Each one should have clear, meaningful opportunities to shape priorities and actions for the school.
5. Prioritize Relationships
Connection and trust are the foundation of any strong community school, and they must be intentionally nurtured.
Need Support With Community School Implementation?
If you're feeling overwhelmed about how to turn your vision into action and lead meaningful change, Partners in School Innovation is here to help.
We work hand-in-hand with school and district leaders to design and implement community school strategies that are impactful and sustainable. Contact our team to explore how we can support your goals.
You can learn more about our approach on our services pages below:
We also invite you to explore our free educational offerings:
Join our online community of equity-focused educators.
Take our on-demand, self-paced courses on Change Management & Engaging Your School Community.
