School Success Takes a Community

While “educational community” and “school community” are time-honored terms, a better description of
traditional school culture would be “silos beside silos.” Teachers often know little about students beyond their
academic performance. Parents are typically only in contact with teachers when there’s a problem with their child
or at parent-teacher conferences (if the parent is particularly motivated, that contact may extend to classroom
volunteering, fundraisers, and PTO meetings.) And while the surrounding community may care about children’s
academic performance, community members may treat the school as a standalone institution because they have
no idea how to get involved or even if they should.

The purpose of this case study is to explore how engaging the community can help bring visible results to the school in the form of student achievement, wellness and school pride.

Topics include:

  • Community involvement in school reform
  • Why it’s important to build communities in schools
  • Ideas and resources for community building
  • And more…

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