California Community Schools Partnership Program

How Learner-Centered Collaborative offerings align

At their core, community schools are focused on whole-learner outcomes—academic, social-emotional, and physical development in an interconnected environment. According to the California Community Schools Framework:

“community schools meet the needs of children and youth by building a positive school climate and trusting relationships, along with rich learning opportunities that prepare all students to succeed in college, career, and life” (p. 1).

Much of the focus for community schools is rightly on extended learning opportunities and expanded networks of support for students. In many ways, educators can see community schools as adding services onto existing systems to address unmet needs. While this is necessary, the success of community schools also requires shifts in practices to embrace an asset-driven, strengths-based approach within inclusive learning communities. The California Community Schools framework specifically calls for learning experiences that are co-designed to leverage student strengths:

“instructional practice should be inspiring, inquiry-oriented, project-based, multi-modal, collaborative, interactive, and informed by the ideals of co-learning. Community schools prioritize experiential learning that deepens connection to and engagement with the community” (California Community School Framework, p. 5).

These shifts in instructional practices require new models of shared leadership that will require an orientation to relational trust, social capital, and empowering students as active agents in the co-design of new models and experiences.

To truly center on our learners they must be involved in informing, inspiring, and iterating on our improvement efforts. We must start by listening to learners and continuing to develop systems to ensure shared context through empathy exercises.

A critical first step to effectively implement community schools is to conduct a community schools diagnostic to gain clarity on opportunities and needs and alignment among all stakeholders. In our model, the foundation for this approach is the ten enabling conditions in our Learner-Centered Framework.

Diagnostic: How It Works

The Learner-Centered Collaborative diagnostic process includes stakeholder interviews, classroom visits, student forums, and a review of relevant documents. From there, we provide a customized report of strengths, opportunities, and recommendations to move your vision forward. These site-based diagnostics can be synthesized into a report with current status and recommendations related to elements of the California Community Schools Framework, including: 

• Four pillars of community schools
• Four key conditions of learning
• Four cornerstone commitments
• Four proven practices

---

---

---

Integrated student supports can support student success by meeting their academic, physical, social-emotional, and mental health needs. The statute defines this as including the “coordination of trauma-informed health, mental health, and social services.” Effectively supporting students also requires that students be well known so that they can be well served.

Family and community engagement involves actively tapping the expertise and knowledge of family and community members to serve as true partners in supporting and educating students. Statute defines this as including “home visits, home-school collaboration, [and] culturally responsive community partnerships.” Learning opportunities for family members as well as structures and opportunities for shared leadership are other important elements of authentic family engagement.

Collaborative leadership and practices for educators and administrators that establish a culture of professional learning, collective trust, and shared responsibility for outcomes in a manner that includes students, families, and community members. Statute defines this as including “professional development to transform school culture and climate that centers on pupil learning and supports mental and behavioral health, trauma-informed care, Social Emotional Learning [and] restorative justice.”

Extended learning time and opportunities that include academic support, enrichment, and real-world learning opportunities (e.g., internships, project-based learning). Statute refers to these opportunities as both “extended learning” and “expanded learning” and defines them as including “before and after school care and summer programs.” Expanded learning opportunities can also include tutoring and other learning supports during school hours.

Supportive environmental conditions that foster strong relationships and community. These include positive sustained relationships that foster attachment and emotional connections; physical, emotional, and identity safety; and a sense of belonging and purpose;

Productive instructional strategies that support motivation, competence, and self-directed learning. These curricula, teaching, and assessment strategies feature well-scaffolded instruction and ongoing formative assessment that support conceptual understanding, take students’ prior knowledge and experiences into account, and provide the right amount of challenge and support on relevant and engaging learning tasks.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) that fosters skills, habits, and mindsets that enable academic progress, efficacy, and productive behavior. These include self-regulation, executive function, intrapersonal awareness and interpersonal skills, a growth mindset, and a sense of agency that supports resilience and productive action.

System of supports that enable healthy development, respond to student needs, and address learning barriers. These include a multi-tiered system of academic, health, and social supports that provide personalized resources within and beyond the classroom to address and prevent developmental detours, including conditions of trauma and adversity.

A Commitment to Assets-Driven and Strength-Based Practice: California’s community schools view students, their families and their community through the lens of their assets and strengths and value the collective wisdom derived from experience, family, history and culture. California community schools view the language of students and family members as a vital asset to be uplifted. California’s community schools understand language to be family, history, culture, and community. Community schools focus on building an embracing culture of individual and communal wellness. An essential component to this assets-based lens towards sustaining wellness is ensuring that healing-centered physical, emotional and mental health supports are integrated into the school community in ways that are accessible, destigmatized and culturally fluent.

A Commitment to Racially Just and Restorative School Climates: California’s community schools commit to creating, nourishing and sustaining school climates that are centered in the embrace of and support for all students in the totality of school interactions. This commitment extends not only onto the playground and cafeteria but into every classroom and office. The commitment explicitly expects the presence of restorative practice rather than punitive, exclusionary discipline that detaches students from school and from needed supports, too often activating a school-to-prison pipeline. Such punitive disciplinary practices are inconsistent with this commitment and run counter to the spirit and intent of the CCSPP Framework.

A Commitment to Powerful, Culturally Proficient and Relevant Instruction: California’s community schools commit to be driven by teaching and learning that relevant to, inclusive of and centered in the wisdom, history, culture and experience of students, families and communities. This culturally rooted instructional practice should be inspiring, inquiry-oriented, project-based, multimodal, collaborative, interactive and informed by the ideals of co-learning. Community schools prioritize experiential learning that deepens connection to and engagement with the community. By expanding learning beyond the school walls and the school day, Community schools redefine traditional constructs who teaches, where we learn and how we build understanding.

A Commitment to Shared Decision Making and Participatory Practices: California’s community schools all share a commitment to authentic and dynamic shared leadership in all aspects of school governance and operations. All school interest holders including students, families, staff, and community members must have genuine engagement in decision making about school climate, curriculum, and services. Shared decision-making practices must also prioritize transparency and shared accountability to ensuring information is both available and accessible, so that all interest holders can fully participate. This commitment to authentic power sharing at both the school site and within the LEA should also be evidenced through demonstrated support from all interest holders at each step of a school’s community school implementation plan.

Community Asset Mapping and Gap Analysis: An essential element for successful community school efforts are strategies to engage school and community interest holders in a coherent process of identifying and curating assets and wisdoms throughout the community. This process should also allow for school and community members to identify gaps in programs, services and resources that inhibit student achievement and community coherence.

The Community School Coordinator: There are many models for staffing community schools for success. All of these models include a coordinator who is responsible for the overall implementation of community school processes, programs, partnerships and strategies at the school site. While districts and schools will approach budgeting and staffing differently, the essential practice is that a discreet position is a threshold for community school success.

Site-Based and LEA-Based Advisory Councils: Authentic shared decision making is a hallmark of the California community schools approach. Similar to the school coordinator position, LEA’s and school sites may design shared decision-making models differently in terms of their composition and scope, but both school site-based and LEA-based shared decision-making councils is also a threshold mechanism for implementing the California community schools model. The threshold practice will engage interest holders including students, staff, families, and community members in determining the focus and direction of the community school effort.

Integrating and Aligning with other relevant Programs: The community schools movement in California is intentionally situated in a suite of initiatives that stand to transform public education at schools throughout the State. Specifically, the work to expand restorative practices and racially just schools, multi-tiered systems of support, statewide systems of support, mental health services for students and families, expanded learning time, universal TK, and the state-wide literacy initiative are all initiatives that can be aligned to and integrated with the community schools movement. Proven positive practice will also align, integrate and cross stitch with other education justice and equity initiatives at the district and school site level.

Our team will guide the creation of a Framework for the Future, including a Learner Profile, Learner Progressions, and a Learning Model that will create alignment across all stakeholders and catalyze your shift to a learner-centered paradigm.

Based on your Framework for the Future, we will conduct a needs assessment including stakeholder interviews, classroom visits, student forums, and a document review. From there we provide a customized report of strengths, opportunities, and recommendations to move you forward.

In order to superpower your learner-centered transformation you need to begin with your learners. Listening to their perspectives, lived experiences and ideas will help you begin your journey towards reimagining what’s possible to meet their needs. We will explore a variety of ways to listen to learners including conducting empathy interviews, hosting student forums, and conducting student surveys.

Student surveys allow education communties to gather feedback about how students are experiencing learning and identify areas to celebrate and amplify, as well as opportunities to further develop.

We lead you through a learner-centered, non-evaluative observation process that promotes opening up classrooms, discussing practices, and learning together. You will gain tools for celebrating what is working and identifying next steps and will come away with a post-walk reflection and executive summary from our team.

A year-long pathway allows a team of educators or the whole school to learn new strategies, try out ideas, and engage in learning cycles with a supportive community to deepen expertise and impact. These pathways put an emphasis on one of our four learner-centered principles: Competency-Based, Authentic, Personalized, and Inclusive and Equitable Community. 

Our Leadership Academy helps form a guiding coalition of key leaders, administrators, and site-level educators to define and align on a shared vision for learning, identify clear metrics, solidify a learning model, and ensure continued improvement and progress toward desired goals.

We provide district and site-level leadership, individual, or team coaching that supports creating the enabling conditions for learner-centered practices. These regularly scheduled sessions inform the progress toward partnership goals and include resources, ideation, and advising tailored to your current needs.