Community Schools

This document reports on a study of a model full-service community school and explains the kind of services provided, staffing considerations, ways of involving community partners, governance arrangements, and parent involvement. It considers the barriers to creating this kind of school and explores ways to fund programs. The narrative offers a snapshot, in fall 2001, of Molly Stark Elementary School in Vermont, but it is also an apt description of similar schools. It focuses on experience, documented and anecdotal, to present the concept. The first part of each chapter focuses on what is going on in other educational settings over the country. The second section uses examples from Molly Stark school where quality instruction is combined with extended-day and extended-year services, health and social services, and parent education and support. The document also examines the prognosis for community schools and considers how they should be sustained. Appendices provide a community-school assessment checklist, a community needs assessment or appearance survey, child-care programs handbook, request for consultation, sample after-school program forms, sample communications with parents about after-school programs, and sample job descriptions for families of employees. (Contains 74 references.) (RKJ)