Community Schools

Making schools a community focus

The Institute for Educational Leadership and Coalition for Community Schools honored IUPUI with the Community Engagement Award at the 2022 National Family and Community Engagement Conference in Los Angeles for decades of commitment to Community Schools and family engagement by the campus.

Community Schools bring communities together by collaborating with educators, families, and organizations to secure the necessary conditions for learning. IU Indianapolis can help.

The Community Schools strategy transforms a school into a place where educators, local community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student learning and healthy development. As partners, they organize in- and out-of-school resources, supports, and opportunities so that young people, their families, and communities thrive.

The Community Schools Forward task force, convened by four national partners —the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, the Children’s Aid National Center for Community Schools, the Institute for Educational Leadership’s Coalition for Community Schools, and the Learning Policy Institute—spent much of 2022 bringing together national and local Community School practitioners and advocates, including representatives from IU Indianapolis and throughout Indiana, to identify and create field-informed resources to align, build, and scale evidence-based, effective, and sustainable Community Schools.

See the webinar recording for Essential resources for driving Community Schools Forward here.

Community Schools are places where educators, local community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student learning and healthy development. This framework for Community Schools includes the key practices, supportive infrastructure, enabling conditions, essential players, and guiding vision for all students to thrive. Developed by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, the Children’s Aid National Center for Community Schools, the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leadership, and the Learning Policy Institute as part of the #CSForward project.

Visit the Community Schools Forward Essential Resources for more information.

Better education starts with community engagement

For youth to succeed, learning must be paired with family and community engagement as well as genuine collective efforts to improve school climate and culture. That’s what Community Schools do. In this strategy, community partners collaborate with educators and parents to ensure that students and their families secure what they need. Services may include:

Mental, dental, and basic health care
Extended-day learning activities
Tutoring and mentoring
College and career prep
Preschool learning
Adult education
Parent engagement programs

They bring community partners together to ensure students and families get the supports they need to help their children with learning, graduate from high school, and enter the world prepared for college and careers.

Community schools bring community partners together to ensure students and families get the supports they need.

Noted partners in the Community School movement

IU Indianapolis is a regional site—UCLA, University of Connecticut, and Binghamton University among them—for professional development and technical assistance in University-Assisted Community Schools with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania.

IU Indianapolis' Support For Community Schools

Our support for community schools draws upon decades of campus/community schools engagement on the Indianapolis Near-Westside and Near-Eastside, including five U.S. Department of Education Full-Service Community Schools projects in the city since 2008. IU Indianapolis' work is also recognized by the University-Assisted Community Schools National Network.

Since 2012, IU Indianapolis has collaborated with area schools in developing community councils, and also facilitates the Indiana Community Schools Network of stakeholders statewide in sharing best practices, advocating for community schools, and promoting related policy interests.

We help schools:

Implement Community Councils
Create agendas that support school community goals
Review relevant data
Identify student and family needs
Secure access to support within their neighborhoods to address identified needs

Outcomes and Indicators for Community Schools: A Guide for Implementers and Evaluators

Based off of the Brookings Institution's Guide for Implementers and Evaluators, IU Indianapolis offers a set of specific outcomes to be achieved and measurable indicators of the outcomes that can be used to monitor short- and medium-term progress toward locally determined goals. They also can provide data to guide continuous improvement of the local Community School strategy.