First published in the Sept. 24 print issue of the Glendale News-Press.
School district officials expect to send out surveys next month asking parents of students at five elementary schools what they might want to see if the school adopts the Community Schools Initiative.
After digesting the information gathered from those surveys and working with the district’s labor groups to further hash out ideas and frameworks, the Glendale Unified School District aims to apply for implementation funding once those applications open up in January. The district has already received a $200,000 planning grant for the initiative, which was awarded in the prior fiscal year.
A short presentation at this week’s Board of Education meeting hailed the state’s Community Schools Initiative as a foundation for individual schools to care for the whole child, expand learning horizons and build stronger relationships with the community by enriching the learning environment, integrating support services for students and by making decision-making a more collaborative process.
“The purpose of the Community School is to bring in the supports that students and families need in order to be successful in the classroom,” explained Stepan Mekhitarian, director of innovation, instruction, assessment and accountability for GUSD. “Every school will be different. Part of that is assessing what the community needs and ensuring that the school can provide those services.”
For now, GUSD is anticipating bringing Community Schools to Cerritos, Columbus, Jefferson, Mann and Marshall elementary schools. Mekhitarian’s team met with those schools’ principals earlier this month to review the proposal timeline and survey questions, which continue to be refined, he said.
Specific examples of what can help make a Community School include having a more robust health clinic or access to counselors; offering extended school day or summer programs, complemented by internships or other real-world experiences; and partnering with certain organizations in communities. It’s not meant to be a one-size-fits-all concept — demographics and socioeconomics factor heavily into figuring out what might be needed to achieve the initiative’s goals.
“Community Schools are a way to bring back populations into our public school system, to retain students and recruit students, and to really make the school feel as though it’s a part of the community as opposed to this thing that you speed by,” said school board member Ingrid Gunnell, who is an educator with the Los Angeles Unified School District. “It really does involve all of the community. There might be classes for parents. There might be showers for students and families that are experiencing homelessness. They might have a food pantry, or clothing washer and dryers. It’s really an exciting opportunity to personalize the school site for the community that it serves — that means adults and children.”
To that end, Superintendent Vivian Ekchian characterized the pending surveys as a “needs assessment” for each school. She also said this week that if a lot of these ideas sound familiar, it’s because GUSD schools have already implemented a number of related programs — wellness centers, internships with local institutions and a growing variety of child care options.
“Parts of this Community School effort are already in place, even prior to us having any kind of a grant for funding,” she said, “so when we apply for the implementation grant, we can say that our schools and community are ripe to it.”
