The West Coast Conference approaching quickly … April 28 - May 1, 2004! The Coalition for Community Schools is collaborating with the National League of Cities' Institute for Youth, Education, and Families to hold the "Your City's Families" Conference in Portland, Oregon. Community schools will be prominently highlighted throughout the conference, including a Pre-Conference half-day Institute, a plenary session, and several workshops. Exciting tours of local community school sites are being planned in conjunction with the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Initiative of Portland/Multnomah County. To download the brochure to register, click here.

Can't attend the whole conference? Well, this year you can chose to attend the Pre-Conference Institutes on Wednesday, April 28th only for $75. You choose between "Your City's Community School" and "Youth Master Plans: Step by Step to Planning for Kids". Send in the registration form now to reserve your spot. Also, as a registration incentive, NLC is offering a day rate of only $150 for the remainder of the conference for folks who can only come for one day. Take advantage of this opportunity to hear from visionary state, county, city and education leaders about how they've created community schools and visit schools where it is happening!

An exciting plenary session on Friday, April 30 will highlight Susan Castillo, Oregon's State Commissioner of Education, Diane Linn, Multnomah County Chair, Jim Francesconi, Portland City Commissioner and other notable leaders from their community who have created a School-Age Policy Framework to support the SUN Community School Initiative.

With so much positive activity around our efforts promoting community schools, we thought it time for a Coalition update. In this newsletter, we share some of the latest news and developments from the Coalition camp. We want to share our news network-wide, just as we try to disseminate news from partners. Remember, if you have a story to tell, send us a note (heifetso@iel.org) so we can get the word out! Read on for the latest from the national-level…

Articles about community schools have appeared in a number of major education journals over the past several months. They are excellent resources for school and community leaders who are involved with community schools or who are thinking about getting involved. Contact Meagan Lindsay (lindsaym@iel.org) for copies.

Newspapers
• At least 38 different newspapers and other media sources around the world picked up a piece by Lisa Cornwell of the Associated Press on schools becoming community hubs. To read the piece as it appeared on CNN, and to see a list of other media sources, click here; also, if you saw the piece elsewhere, please let us know at lindsaym@iel.org.
  
• "If You Want To Build A Better Community It Takes A School," editorial by David Abel and Jonathan Fielding, LA TIMES, January 2004.

Magazines


• Making the Difference with Community Schools. Principal Leadership, National Association of Secondary School Principals, March 2004.
  
• Community Schools Lead to Success. Our Children, National PTA, January/February 2004.
  
• Community Schools: Engaging Parents and Families, written with Helen Nissani of Family Support America. Principal Magazine, NAESP, January 2004.
  
• Systems Change Through Community Schools, written with Dan Cady of the National Center for Community Education. School Administrator Magazine, American Association of School Administrators, January 2004.
  
• Inviting the Outside In, by Craig Colgan. Principal Leadership, National Association of Secondary School Principals, December 2003.

Journals


• Community Counts, commentary by Anne Lewis. Phi Delta Kappan.
  
• The Urban Challenge: Against the Odds in City Schools, by the journal's senior editor, Kathleen Vail. American School Board Journal, National School Board Association, January 2004.

Other


• Community Schools: Educators and Community Sharing Responsibility for Student Learning. Infobrief, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, February 2004.

Report


• Schools as Centers of Community: A Citizens' Guide for Planning and Design is a late 2003 report co-published by the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Council of Educational Facility Planners, Building Educational Success Together, and Coalition for Community Schools. Authors Steven Bingler, Linda Quinn, and Kevin Sullivan outline a process intended to engage all educational stakeholders in planning schools that more adequately address the needs of the whole learning community. Download a copy of the report at the link above, or, hard copies are available for $12 with pre-paid checks from the Coalition directly.

The Coalition has been working on the development of a web-based community school directory. It is intended to serve as a resource for practitioners who want to learn about efforts in similar places, and policy makers who want to know more about community schools. Active since February, we now need your help to populating the database.
Encourage the schools in your network to go to www.communityschools.org and click on the icon in the upper right hand corner to begin the survey, which only takes about 30 minutes to complete. We've done the legwork designing and implementing this great resource, now its up to you! The Directory will only be as successful as you make it: we need information about your community schools! Won't you help us get the word out?

In a new effort supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Coalition is focusing on the curricular dimensions of community schools. While recent research demonstrates the importance of student engagement on improved student performance, far too many classroom activities seem abstract and distant from student experience. Using the community - its history, culture, and real problems - as the context for learning is a proven method of instruction that is nevertheless underutilized, especially in today's education reform environment. To begin this effort, in January the Coalition brought together a group of partners and colleagues to plan our work. Participants included people focused on different parts of the issue: service learning, environmental education, place-based education, academically-community service, youth engagement, after school. The Coalition sees community as text as a unifying framework for all these efforts.

The group will proceed with the development of a brief statement defining what we mean by "community as curriculum" and why it is an essential strategy for helping more young people succeed. We have drafted a paper that is currently under review. To learn more about work going on in this arena, take a look at the websites of our participating partners:

State Education and Environment Roundtable
Rural Schools and Community Trust
Center for Community Partnerships
National Service Learning Partnership
Forum for Youth Investment

In late January, the Coalition convened the first meeting of the Urban Community School Network in Chicago. Eight multi-site initiatives were represented, including Chicago, IL; Evansville, IN; Portland/Multnomah County, OR; Lincoln, NE; Detroit, MI; Baltimore, MD; Indianapolis, IN; and Kansas City, MO. These communities have made a commitment to the development of community schools as a core element of their agenda for improving student learning, helping families thrive, and building stronger communities.

Objectives for the network are to create a learning community, to share lessons, tools and other resources, to increase the visibility of community schools with a public network and an expanded number of community school champions; and to identify changes in local, state, and national policies necessary to support community schools. Some of the current Network efforts include the creation of a consistent set of outcomes and indicators to measuring the effectiveness of community schools. A comparison of what different efforts are currently measuring has revealed that indeed, there are consistent, outcomes and indicators for tracking community school success.

We consider it vital to demonstrate that community schools are not isolated phenomena, but that school and community leaders are beginning to see community schools as a core dimension of their education reform work. One of our first products coming out of this Network will be a paper on how communities and school districts are taking the community school vision to scale. Look for it in the early fall!

The first Partners meeting of the year was held at the Offices of the American Federation of Teachers, with over forty partners represented. The meeting began with updates on the Coalition's recent progress, then members from the education, youth development, health, and community-building sectors had the opportunity to present their own concerns and suggestions. Presenters included Philip Schoo, superintendent of Lincoln Public Schools, Lincoln, Nebraska, Dr. Karen Mapp, Deputy Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement, Boston Public Schools, Mary Filardo, President, 21st Century School Fund, and Barbara Diamond, Senior Program Officer, KnowledgeWorks Foundation. Participants spent the afternoon in workgroups focused on three topics, including: the 2005 Coalition National Forum, Outreach and Constituency Building, and the upcoming going to scale report. For more, see the meeting summary.

Northeast Regional Forum (February 6, 2004): On a slushy day in Boston, over 300 participants attended this successful meeting held in partnership with the Boston Full Service Schools Roundtable, the Nellie Mae Foundation, and other organizations. Mayor Menino of Boston, Mayor Cicilline of Providence, Providence Superintendent Melody Johnson, and Boston Deputy Superintendent Karen Mapp participated. For more, see http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/02.12/09-fullservice.html.

Illinois Regional Forum (October 23, 2003): There were 245 participants in attendance at this Chicago meeting held in partnership with the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning Academic Development Institute, Illinois Family Partnership.

Save the date for the Coalition's National Forum, to be held March 9-11, 2005, at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. Planning work has long since begun, and we expect a great meeting! We need your input on what you'd like to see, hear and do, so email suggestions now to ccs@iel.org. Lets make this forum a success!

The Coalition is now working in three states developing a community school strategy. In Illinois, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, progress is being made toward comprehensively implementing community school components state-wide. Read on for specific developments:

Illinois: The Illinois State Board of Education has created a Full Service Schools Training Task Force. See http://www.fscs.k12.il.us/Illinois_Initiative.htm for more. In addition, Governor Blagojevich has shown interest in community schools and we are working with our Illinois partners to strengthen his commitment.

Oregon: As the SUN Community Schools Initiative www.sunschools.org continues to gain support in and around Portland/Multnomah County, the Coalition is working with SUN and other Oregon leaders to develop an Oregon community schools strategy. Leaders from the SUN Initiative have recently presented before the State Board of Education. Chief State School Officer Susan Castillo has shown increasing support saying, "One of my highest priorities is to close the achievement gaps, and the SUN Community Schools join me in this effort by providing full and comprehensive services for all of our children. The community schools have it right by recognizing that linking students and parents with social services, expanding the range of after-school activities, and increasing parent involvement are vital components to creating a successful learning environment and encouraging academic excellence for every child."

Pennsylvania: Coalition staff and partners are working with the Pennsylvania State Department of Education and other state agencies to develop a state community schools vision and strategy. The Chief State School Officer, Vicki Phillips, her Deputy, Jerry Zahorchak and Mary Ramirez, Director of the Bureau of Student and Community Supports have shown strong interest in community schools.

The Coalition is developing an online toolkit/resource compendium to assist community school practitioners with the development of community schools. We need the assistance of partners to identify tools that have been valuable in your work. These may be tools developed by other organizations or tools that you have developed to meet particular local needs. Send them along: Coalition for Community Schools, 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20036 attn: Toolkit, or via email to shahb@iel.org. To see a preview of what we're hoping to pull together, click here.

Since last September, we've been working with a team of consultants from Georgetown University's Communication, Culture, and Technology Program to update, redesign, and restructure our website. Their work thus far has included a heuristic evaluation, usability testing of our current site, and a thorough audience analysis including phone interviews and a survey that some 370 of you responded to intended to gauge how well our current site meets the needs of our users. Using findings from the above, the team is now applying human-centered design principles to inform the revamped website, aiming for ease of navigation and increased availability of tools and resources for users. Excitedly, we are present working with them to launch the finished product. If you would like more information on their process or to see copies of their reports, email heifetso@iel.org. Be on the look out for our new site, to appear within the next few months!

Additional Information
Check out http://www.communityschools.org/ for more information on the Coalition's work and progress.

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Coalition for Community Schools c/o Institute for Educational Leadership * 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW Ste 310 * Washington, DC 20036