School-Community Partnerships
Category : Creating and Sustaining the Conditions
Level : School or System
To what extent are there opportunities for the development of school-community partnerships and for the community to engage/support student learning?
More and better learning time approaches are explicit about engaging a broad range of partners in supporting student learning and growth at the school site. Local businesses, industry, and organizations can provide support through internship or mentoring opportunities; post secondary institutions can expand learning opportunities; social service agencies, nonprofits, and healthcare providers in the community can create formal relationships with schools, using the additional time to provide needed services to students. Many expanded learning designs are explicit in using the additional time to increase the communities’ agency or role in making decisions and building relationships with school personnel, students, and families. This indicator aims to measure both the breadth and depth of these kinds of relationships.
- Schools invite community involvement and leadership (e.g., community advisory board).
- The range of organizations and activities offered to students by community partners reflects the needs of students, the school, and the community.
- There is a school-community coordinator/liaison.
- There is evidence that school faculty and/or staff are working directly with faculty and/or staff of community programs offered to students.
- Information is shared between schools and service providers.
- Quantity, quality, and coherence is evident across community partners engaged in schools, including community organizing groups, health service organizations, before- and after-school providers, community, business and industry organizations,postsecondary institutions, technical support organizations, and funders.
- Community partners are distributed equitably across schools in a district.