Community Schools Leadership Network (CSLN)
Network Purpose :
To serve as an active network of Community School Initiative leaders that provides a home for professional learning and the innovative and courageous advancement of the field.
Goals:
Mutual Support
• Build supportive and responsive relationships among initiative leaders in order to improve skills and share best practices designed to strengthen local, regional, and statewide implementation.
Collective Learning
• Create shared learning opportunities that are responsive to the needs of local initiative leaders.
Advancing the Field
• Create a forum for collective deliberation and action directed towards advancing the community schools field in practice, policy, and research.
• Play a leadership role in connecting and informing the other networks with the voice of the field.
New Membership Guidelines
We define a Community Schools Initiative as having the following elements:
• Strategic plan in place for growth and scaling up (required)
• Led by cross sector system level leadership outside of a school site
• Active resource development and advocacy for all schools within the initiative
We defined CSLN Member as meeting the following criteria:
• The single leader recognized by cross sector system level leadership as responsible and accountable for the system level development, management, and advocacy of the community school initiative on a day to day basis.
We laid out a new membership intake process below:
• Prospective members complete an
online form, attach a plan, and submit it to the CCS Partnerships Manager.
• Partnerships Manager will review submitted information and personally connect with prospective members to gauge their readiness for the CSLN and connect them with capacity building entities if necessary.
• Partnerships Manager will submit prospective members to the CSLN Leadership on monthly call for final decision.
• Partnerships Manager will follow-up with prospective member and add to all CSLN databases and Coalition lists.
Meetings: The Network will meet at least twice per year, if possible in conjunction with another convening (CCS national conference, CCS partners meeting, NCCS Practicum, CCS Awards/Advocacy Day). Monthly conference calls and/or webinars for the full Network are held on the 4th Wednesday of every month.
Interested in joining this Network: Contact Bernice Butler, Partnerships Manager at butlerb@iel.org.
Other Resources:
- Community Schools Collaborative Leadership Framework
- Community Schools Fact Sheet
- Community Schools Results Framework - This document outlines a rationale for the community school as a primary vehicle for increasing student success and strengthening families and community; and it defines specific results that community schools seek—both in terms of how they function and in relationship to the well being of students, families and communities.
- Community Schools Evaluation Toolkit - This toolkit is designed to help community schools evaluate their efforts so that they learn from their successes, identify current challenges, and plan future efforts. It is a practical, hands-on guide that makes it possible for you to improve your community school’s effectiveness and to tell your story. Equally important, it offers a menu of data collection tools (i.e. surveys, public databases) for evaluating whether and how your school is achieving results.
- Community Schools Results – see the difference that community schools across the country are making!
- Community Schools PowerPoints – breaks down the community school strategy. This is a great tool for getting stakeholders on board!