Northwest Education Magazine - Winter 2010

Imagine a public school in your neighborhood that not only provides high-quality academics, but also a wide range of in-house health and social services, before-school and after-school programs for both children and adults, and a full-time coordinator to oversee it all. The dream of such “full-service community schools” goes back at least 100 years, to the pioneering work of John Dewey and Jane Addams who believed that schools, in addition to providing academic instruction, should serve as the center for a comprehensive network of social and health services. Today, that dream is being realized to some degree in a number of Northwest schools that are profiled in the latest issue of Education Northwest Magazine.

Although many community schools, such as those run by the Children’s Aid Society in New York City, have existed for several decades, the dream has never been fully realized in the United States, but that may be changing. Full-service programs such as the Harlem Children’s Zone are currently gaining a lot of media attention, and the movement has a big supporter in Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who helped created more than 150 community schools while superintendent of Chicago Public Schools. The Obama administration has already created a $10 million competitive grant program to support the creation of new community schools, and President Obama’s campaign proposal to create “promise neighborhoods” seems to signal an all-out push to take the idea nationwide.

Education Northwest Magazine looks at how this is currently playing out in the Pacific Northwest. In practice, current community school efforts vary widely in both the kinds of services and activities they provide and in how comprehensive the programs are. This is true both nationally and regionally. For example, the Multnomah County, Oregon, Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) program—profiled in this issue—is one of the most well-established and fully integrated community school programs in the country. Other programs highlighted in the magazine are less far-reaching, but offer extended school hours and coordinate services in order to meet the physical, social, and emotional needs of the most at-risk children and parents. Examples include Anchorage’s Russian Jack Elementary, which focuses on social-emotional learning, and the Coeur d’Alene School District, which has teamed up with the community to tackle homelessness.

In this issue of the magazine you will find inspiring stories of these efforts, as well an overview of the topic, a review of the research base, and interviews with national experts who are helping to give this old idea new momentum.