Are Community Schools the Answer?

Community schools are a great idea, but it seems no one is willing to pay for them, especially in the state of Vermont.

Vermont Digger online reported recently that,

“Tired kids don’t do their best learning.”

“So when Samantha Stevens, community schools coordinator at the North Country Supervisory Union, finds out that a student is sleeping without a bed at home, she buys them a mattress.”

“’On a home visit, we might discover that there are no mattresses on the bunk bed,’ she said in an interview, noting the supervisory union has bought six mattresses since January. ‘That’s a time when we’ll be like, ‘Okay, we’re going to go to Walmart right now.’”

“The money North Country uses to meet students’ immediate and basic needs comes through Vermont’s Community Schools Act, an innovative grant program that takes an expansive understanding of the role schools serve in the lives of students and their families.”

“But now, amid skyrocketing cost of education in Vermont, the future of community schools looks tenuous. As the source of funding – federal Covid-19 aid – runs dry, lawmakers must decide whether state funding should be dedicated to keep the community schools grants alive.”

“In 2021, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 67, also called the Community Schools Act. The competitive three-year pilot project was endowed with about $3.4 million in federal funds and overseen by the state Agency of Education.”

“The money supported five recipients…all of which served communities with at least 40% of students meeting the income-based eligibility for free or reduced lunch.”

“The community schools philosophy seeks to address new challenges facing students across the country, such as increased social and behavioral needs and decreasing community connectedness. At the same time, the program acknowledges the changing role schools play in the present day, often serving as social service hubs for everything from psychiatric services to nursing to dentistry.”

“The overall model is reduced to five not-so-catchy pillars: integrated student supports; expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities; active family and community engagement; collaborative leadership and practices; and safe, inclusive and equitable learning environments.”

“In practice, though, community schools are far less bureaucratic than they sound. Educational leaders work to get kids into school to do their best learning. Parents lack transportation? Community school leaders drive kids to school. Interested in engineering but the regular curriculum doesn’t support it? Community schools can create robotics programs after school, or place kids in internships to meet their interests.”

“The framework has gained traction in urban areas such as New York City and Los Angeles, but leaders say Vermont is on the cutting edge of education by introducing community schools in a rural setting. And at a time in which the ballooning cost of public school is top of mind in Vermont, advocates point to a growing body of evidence showing that community schools provide a significant return on investment, approaching problems from a proactive rather than reactive perspective.”

“Now, in the final year of the grant program, the Agency of Education says the number of community schools is growing, serving more than 5,200 students in 28 different schools, up from 16. The agency has also partnered with the University of Vermont to study the effectiveness of the community schools philosophy, with the long-term goal of designing implementation guides for schools across the state.”

“The preliminary data is encouraging. In Hardwick, school leaders say 9^th grade absenteeism is down 50% over three years. They also believe the community schools model helped them retain or attract 40 to 50 more students than they’d expect based on the broader community demographics.”

“But without action, the dedicated funding will dry up. In the eleventh-hour push, the House Education Committee is considering whether to appropriate $1.9 million to keep the program going. That amount is the same as what funds a specific high school completion program lawmakers are recommending be moved out of the education fund into the general fund. Thus, advocates say, the move would not create a net impact on the already overburdened education fund.”

“Opponents in the committee – largely the three Republican members – don’t contest the success of the Community Schools Act. But amid education property tax increases above 20% in some towns, they say now’s not the time to spend more money.”

…

“Even if the funding ekes out of the divided committee, community schools face a more uncertain future before the rest of the Legislature and the governor.”

One of the problems with public school financing today is that money is siloed away into isolated budgets, ignoring the need of the individual young learner. For example, in Vermont the state has both an Agency of Education and an Agency of Human Services. Young learners, especially poor young learners, have needs that would qualify them to receive funding from both agencies. But, if a kid needs a mattress to sleep, someone needs to make the decision whether the money to pay for that mattress will come from the Agency of Education or the Agency of Human Services. Right now, in Vermont, that mattress is being paid for by the Agency of Education. That’s why that agency believes it doesn’t have enough resources to continue running a program like community schools.

The traditional school system has never perfected having “the money follow the child.” There’s still too much money tied up in governmental siloes where bureaucrats argue about what agency will pay for a mattress, or a meal, or rent.

If you started with a learning plan for each learner, decided what needs and goals were to be a part of that plan, and then budgeted money to that plan so that those needs and goals were met, then each young learner would receive the type of support they deserve. Of course there would need to be a cap to how much money was assigned to each individual learning plan, but my guess is that we would be spending far less taking care of kids, academically, socially, and emotionally, than we spend per pupil today within the traditional K-12 system.

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. Til then. SVB