Five Keys to Designing Highly Effective Community Schools

Recognizing that it actually takes a village for college kids to study successfully, a rising variety of college techniques are embracing a “community schools” mannequin of schooling. Schools turn out to be neighborhood facilities that combine wraparound companies resembling tutoring, dietary help, well being care, psychological well being counseling, and workforce growth to fulfill college students’ complete wants.

In California, as an example, state officers are investing greater than $4 billion to rework faculties into neighborhood facilities over the following seven years. Altogether, the Coalition for Community Schools estimates there are greater than 5,000 neighborhood faculties nationwide.

This strategy expands the standard thought of what a public college seems to be like dramatically. It additionally raises many necessary elements to contemplate when designing the bodily college surroundings.

More faculties are opening themselves to the neighborhood past common educational hours to supply companies resembling afterschool enrichment actions, scholar tutoring, breakfast and dinner, grownup courses, and even medical care. Here are 5 key suggestions for Ok-12 leaders to contemplate when designing neighborhood faculties that work effectively for everybody.

Make It a Collaborative Process

Work carefully with different community-based teams to know their wants and how one can accommodate these inside the design of your college facility. Use surveys, focus teams, and public committees or process forces to collect enter from as many stakeholder teams as potential, together with college students, academics, mother and father, social staff, well being care professionals, and local people organizations.

“An inclusive design process can address the needs of each unique community,” writes Danielle Dunn from Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning. “A participatory design process is especially important if the needs of the surrounding community are not usually considered in school design.”

Include Shared Spaces for Year-round Community Use

Use the suggestions you get from stakeholder teams to plan areas that replicate the neighborhood’s explicit wants. These would possibly embody shared public areas resembling auditoriums, gymnasiums, sports activities services, cafeterias, libraries, media facilities, maker areas, and well being clinics, in addition to separate, extra areas—resembling daycare facilities—that aren’t historically included within the design of a college facility.

Consider Accessibility

When designing neighborhood faculties, take into consideration how one can make shared areas extra open and accessible to the general public.

If you need public areas for use steadily after college hours by the neighborhood, they need to be positioned in a manner that’s simply accessible from the skin, with loads of parking and their very own separate entrances if potential. Community members ought to be capable to acknowledge these entrances immediately and get the place they should go along with little effort.

Accessibility is at all times a key design consideration, however needless to say areas and furnishings in a neighborhood college could also be utilized by each kids and adults. Consider utilizing height-adjustable tables and different versatile furnishings to accommodate a variety of customers.

Design With Adaptability in Mind

The wants of a neighborhood usually evolve over time, and faculties could signal new joint-use agreements with extra organizations from one 12 months to a different. School services ought to be designed for optimum agility to accommodate these adjustments and permit for brand spanking new makes use of on an ongoing foundation.

Flexible, open buildings that enable college areas to be reconfigured simply for various kinds of makes use of increase the vary of actions {that a} college constructing can help. Cafeterias and gymnasiums are sometimes two of the most important open areas in a college. While gyms could already be in use for sports activities, cafeterias are sometimes open throughout non-traditional hours. For new initiatives, take into account setting up giant, open areas to be used by the neighborhood, with movable partitions that may create separate areas for varied neighborhood actions. Choosing modular and movable tables, desks, chairs, shelving, and different furnishings may also make college services adaptable to a number of completely different functions.

“Due to the demands that might be placed on a school by the community, the space must accommodate changing technologies, a variety of plumbing and heating needs, and be able to be extended or contracted in floor space when needed,” Dunn writes. “These issues have been addressed with solutions as variable as using movable partitions as walls to auditoriums that open out onto open green spaces and can become outdoor learning centers. Unconventional uses require unconventional forms.”

Pay Close Attention to Safety and Security

Safety and safety are at all times top-of-mind considerations. With neighborhood members commonly utilizing the constructing, how will you retain college students and employees secure? For occasion, take into account how one can separate neighborhood areas from student-used areas within the facility’s design, resembling by utilizing completely different entry factors.

School designers may also create a safer surroundings by establishing clear sight strains inside hallways and customary areas and by avoiding nooks and recesses wherein somebody can simply conceal. The strategic use of home windows with clear views of public entrances offers a chance for pure surveillance whereas letting potential dangerous actors know that others can see them clearly as they strategy the constructing. Finally, expanded hours and entry could require new procedures for customer entry administration and extra staffing concerns.

Community Schools Offer Clear Benefits

“Because learning never happens in isolation, community schools focus on what students in the community truly need to succeed, whether it’s free healthy meals, health care, tutoring, mental health counseling, or other tailored services before, during, and after school,” says the National Education Association (NEA). The group notes that greater than 25 million US college students stay in under-resourced households, the very best proportion in generations—and neighborhood faculties assist meet these college students’ wants head-on, permitting them to study extra successfully.

Opening faculties to the bigger neighborhood additionally encourages neighborhoods to take a position extra of their native faculties. “Schools which had historically struggled to approve bonds noted that, after basing their schools on the community school design model, they were able to justify raising taxes and pass school bonds more easily,” Dunn writes.

The neighborhood college mannequin is a extremely compelling strategy. By following these ideas, Ok-12 leaders can design profitable neighborhood faculties that work higher for everybody.

Resources

Dunn, Danielle. “Making It Work: Designing Neighborhood Schools for the Entire Community.” Cornell University Department of City and Regional Planning, April 2013. https://labs.aap.cornell.edu/sites/aap-labs/files/2022-09/Dunn_2013_NeighborhoodSchools.pdf

McDaniels, Abel. “Building Community Schools Systems.” Center for American Progress, Aug. 22, 2018. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/building-community-schools-systems/

National Education Association, “Meeting the Needs of Students with Community Schools.” https://www.nea.org/student-success/great-public-schools/community-schools

Newberry, Laura. “Will California’s $4.1-Billion Bet on Community Schools Transform K-12 Education?” Education Week, July 20, 2022. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/will-californias-4-1-billion-bet-on-community-schools-transform-k-12-education/2022/07