California Ramps Up Support for Community Schools

For at least two decades, several California schools have embraced a community schools model that marries schools and community organizations to seamlessly provide a variety of supports to students and families in communities with the highest needs. But when the pandemic hit, those needs multiplied. Members of the California State Board of Education saw the need to double down on community schools as a proven approach to addressing those needs.

Even before the impact of the pandemic on student health was fully realized, the state board had been evaluating the results of the 2018–19 California Healthy Kids Survey, which annually collects statewide data on school climate and safety, student wellness, and youth resiliency. “When we looked at some of the startling data in our healthy school survey of the increase in suicidal ideation, increase of chronic absenteeism, increase of depression in students, that was the moment we said we needed to do something differently to engage our students and families and the broader community,” said Dr. Francisco Escobedo, state board member and executive director of the National Center for Urban School Transformation.

The Learning Policy Institute defines a community school as “an evidence-based strategy to advance equity and reduce barriers to learning by providing the services needed to support student and family well-being.”[1] While no two community schools are exactly alike, California’s statewide framework highlights four pillars that undergird good community schools: integrated student supports, extended learning time and opportunities, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership and practices for educators and administrators (see box 1).[2]

In 2020, the California legislature allocated $45 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds for its existing community schools. But the next year, it committed to a major expansion. With the California Community Schools Partnership Act in 2021, the legislature launched a grant program to help more schools become community schools over the succeeding five to seven years by leveraging local partnerships to provide wraparound services for students and the communities they serve. Between 2021 and 2022, the state invested $4.1 billion, the largest community school investment in the nation.

The legislation does not expire until 2032. It requires that program updates and evaluations be submitted to the governor and legislature annually.

Community Role in Improving Student Outcomes

Building off local partnerships, community schools provide access to academic learning, health and social services, youth and community development, and community engagement in areas where families otherwise lack these resources.

“There needs to be an intense examination by every state looking at those pockets that really need [extra] assistance through a community schools approach to elevate the right learning environment,” Escobedo said. “Learning doesn’t begin and end at school. It begins and ends in the neighborhood.”

Children’s ability to learn is strongly intertwined with their social, emotional, and physical needs. Yet many children confront barriers to learning: housing and food insecurity, physical and mental illnesses, and trauma. In the 2021–22 school year, public schools nationwide identified 1.2 million students (2.4 percent of all students) who experienced homelessness. That number has increased by 79 percent since 2004–05.[4]

“Many families in California, in fact, are increasingly low income. Even in just the four years I’ve been on the board, we’ve gone from 58 percent of the student body to 65 percent being low income,” said Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California state board. “Building the support system around the child and the family so they can be able to be fully present and learning has been very important for us.”

Nationwide, 14.7 million students, or 29.7 percent, were chronically absent during the 2021–22 school year, meaning they missed 10 percent or more of school days in a year.[5] In California, 30 percent of all students enrolled in public schools were considered chronically absent in the 2021–22 school year compared with 12 percent in the 2018–19 school year.[6] Education nonprofit Attendance Works cites four root causes: health and housing instability, aversion to school and the public education system, disengagement from instruction, and misconceptions about the effects of absences on student outcomes.

A 2020 RAND study of a community school program in New York City found it improved student attendance, as well as on-time grade progression and high school graduation rates, math achievement, credit accumulation, and a reduction in disciplinary incidents for elementary and middle school students.[7] Community schools have also been found to meet the needs of low-achieving students in high-poverty schools and help close opportunity and achievement gaps for students from low-income families, students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities.[8]

“It’s not just hard work, it’s heart work,” said Paliotti. “This is a broader focus on student well-being and family and community engagement. Having that vision and mission and getting the right people who have that as their goal and are willing to do both the hard work and heart work is really important.”

California’s Grant Program

There are three types of grant funding for California community schools. Planning grants of up to $200,000 are awarded to local education agencies (LEAs) without any community schools over a period of two years to kick-start the work. Implementation grants support new community schools or expand or continue existing schools. These grants allow for multiple rounds of funding. Extension grant recipients get an additional two years of state funding to continue their work.

In May 2022, the state board approved more than $38 million of the $4.1 billion for the first 193 LEAs in the first cohort of planning grants under the California Community Schools Partnership Program. The following March, they approved over $44 million for 223 LEAs in the second cohort. The first cohort of implementation grants went to 76 LEAs, supporting 458 school sites. Eleven of those schools were in rural areas. California awarded the second cohort of implementation grants to 128 LEAs comprising 570 schools, 15 of which were in rural areas.[9]

In May 2024, the state board approved the third cohort of implementation grants, which consisted of nearly $1.9 billion for 288 LEAs at a total of 995 school sites. The grants provide up to $500,000 annually for five years per school site.

California’s approach also focuses on sustaining these schools. “We created technical assistance centers throughout California to ensure that there was a place that schools can go to really learn from one another and enhance the assets they currently have in place,” Escobedo said. Centers in nine regions support grant applicants and recipients.

Focus on Family Connections

The school-based services have been central to providing holistic support to students and their families. A community school in Escobedo’s former Chula Vista district, for example, provided services at school right away to parents experiencing homelessness, where otherwise they may have had to wait weeks to receive services.

“Within a week, so many things could happen to them,” Escobedo said. “The greatest effect is that immediate response for families that are in social crisis. What I had in my district was not the exception but was becoming the rule. When you look at the increasing number of students that live in poverty, you know those types of services are needed more than ever.”

Darling-Hammond pointed to how community schools in California often have parent centers and community school managers to engage families, and some have used state funding for adult education so parents can learn English and computer skills and gain access to washers, dryers, and other things that will help them in their home life and employment. “It is very important for families to be connected to the schools,” she said.

State Board Role

In January 2022, the California state board adopted a community schools framework to guide implementation.[10] It outlines the state’s capacity-building supports, including professional development, coaching, partnership development, and strategic planning.

State boards can bring more voices to the table for planning and implementing community schools, Escobedo said. “[State boards] are not just overseeing schools,” he said. “You’re overseeing communities. That’s a really important mind frame that all state board members need. Then, once you have that, how do you access the assets around your community? How could you create policy that will help schools? Creating those critical connections is something that will benefit every single state board member throughout the nation.”

Asset mapping helps schools discern whom they can bring to the table for partnerships, Ratliff said. Collecting and analyzing data from multiple sources “paves the next step for what we should do,” she added. “And as we start to build these connections in a really systematized way, we’re able to find partners that want to partner with us.”

Research group WestEd made an initial report on its survey of first-cohort grantees to the California state board at its December 2023 meeting. Grantees emphasized the importance of sustained, flexible, long-term funding to continue and expand the work.[11]

The research helped make the case for sustained state investment, Escobedo said. “It takes three or four years for a change effort to begin taking root. Especially when you are working with other agencies, it takes time to build those bridges. It doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “But when it works, it’s beautiful to see. People wouldn’t want to go back to working in silos.”

WestEd’s survey evaluations indicated that over a one-year period, grant recipients saw significant improvements in services and practices around the state’s framework pillars: integrated student supports, family and community engagement, collaborative leadership and practices for educators and administrators, and extended learning time and opportunities.[12] The report also cited substantial progress in the implementation of the state’s community schools program, despite challenges that the pandemic imposed on the first cohort, such as remote instruction, increased health concerns, and economic repercussions on families.

A separate 2024 survey of first-cohort grantees found that 90 percent of students enrolled in schools that received implementation grants were either low-income, English learners, or in foster care. Eight percent of students were African American, and 74 percent were Latino. One school grantee said that strategic partnerships and the presence of onsite health services decreased chronic absenteeism by 15.6 percent.[13]

A recent LPI study of four California elementary or K-8 community schools in low-income areas examined how they reduced chronic absenteeism after the pandemic. The authors attribute these successes to the schools’ abilities to better engage families, increase student connectedness and relationship building, systematically track and analyze data, and use tiered systems of support.[14]

Community schools have also helped principals, especially when it comes to student behavior, Escobedo said. “More than anything else, the discipline issues really plummet because of this approach. So many of the principals say that the most positive effect is the improved behavior at their school,” he said.

Schools in unique or hard-to-reach settings have also provided positive feedback, according to Escobedo. “Rural schools are in better shape than they were before, where typically rural schools are completely isolated without any assistance,” he said. “Regional rural communities have been able to pool their resources in a better, refined way. There has been better communication [and pooling of resources] between the tribal communities as well.”

Recommendations

Escobedo identified infrastructure as one of the biggest hurdles to standing up a statewide program of community schools. It requires comprehensive efforts and dedicated personnel at the state education agency to monitor and coordinate the schools.

“Having a liaison at the district level that helps coordinate all those services is really critical,” he added. “Having clear lines of communication and implementation is really important. You can’t say, ‘We’re going to create this entity, and it will evolve naturally.’ You have to continually make improvements on it.”

While not all states may be ready to launch a comprehensive statewide program, having state leaders visiting schools and engaging local stakeholders are strong initial steps to align the state’s work to the needs of a community and to identify how community partnerships have developed and what can sustain and improve the services these partnerships deliver.

Through student surveys such as the Youth Risk Behavior Survey or other state equivalents, state board members can also seek data on the status of student mental health and request presentations on what resources districts need to better identify and address student needs. State board members can foster relationships with community partners, including health and medical centers, parent groups, afterschool programs, and other community-based organizations. From there, states can look for opportunities to develop frameworks or guidance on how their districts can begin or continue existing community school efforts.

California’s approach was buoyed by support from its school administrators association, teachers unions, parent associations, and school boards, Escobedo said. “You really need those partners that are completely in agreement, because this is hard work,” he said. “If you don’t have the buy-in, don’t even attempt it.”

Lastly, states need to invest in planning, implementation, and sustainability. “If this is going to be a commitment, you have to show the commitment from your pocketbook. It has to be long term, at least five years, better ten years, because of the complexity in creating these schools,” Escobedo said.

“Community schools could be considered a cost, or they could be considered an investment,” Darling-Hammond said. “It’s very important for people to understand the many ways in which they more than pay back the investments that are made, both monetarily in terms of dollars for services for kids, and then educationally, in terms of student outcomes.”

“The grant just multiplies and multiplies, because it gives you the seed money, but then people just jump in on their own accord once they see something is rolling,” Ratliff said.

Notes

[1] Learning Policy Institute, “Community Schools,” web page.

[2] California Department of Education, California Community Schools Framework (2022); Since California adopted their framework, LPI identified two additional elements in its 2023 publication with the Brookings Institute: a culture of belonging, safety, and care and rigorous, community-connected classroom instruction. Community Schools Forward, “Framework: Essentials for Community School Transformation” (LPI, 2023).

[3] California State Board of Education, California Community Schools Framework.

[4] National Center for Homeless Education, “Student Homelessness in America: School Years 2019–20 to 2021–22,” brief (Browns Summit, NC: University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2023).

[5] Hedy Chang, Robert Balfanz, and Vaughan Byrnes, “Rising Tide of Chronic Absence Challenges Schools,” blog post (Attendance Works, 2023).

[6] FutureEd, “Explainer: Tracking State Trends in Chronic Absenteeism,” web page, (Nov. 11, 2024).

[7] William R. Johnston et al., “Illustrating the Promise of Community Schools: An Assessment of the Impact of the New York City Community Schools Initiative,” research report (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020).

[8] Anna Maier, Julia Daniel, and Jeannie Oakes, “Community Schools as an Effective School Improvement Strategy: A Review of the Evidence,” brief (Palo Alto, CA: LPI, 2017).

[9] California Department of Education, “Report to the Governor and the Legislature: 2023 Formative Evaluation of the California Community Schools Partnership Program” (December 2023).

[10] California State Board of Education, California Community Schools Framework.

[11] Ashley Boal, Taylor Gara, and Justine Zimiles, “California Community Schools Partnership Program: Findings from the Pre-Post Assessment of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund Cohort,” (San Francisco: WestEd, 2023), appendix to California Department of Education, “Report to the Governor and the Legislature: 2023 Formative Evaluation of the California Community Schools Partnership Program” (December 2023).

[12] Ashley Boal, Taylor Gara, and Justine Zimiles, “California Community Schools Partnership Program.”

[13] Center for Community Schooling, ”Exploring the Influence of Community Schools on Whole Child and Family Supports,” blog post (Los Angeles, CA: University of California–Los Angeles, March 2024).

[14] Emily Germain et al., “Reducing Chronic Absenteeism: Lessons from Community Schools,” fact sheet (LPI, August 2024).