GUILDERLAND — “Community Schools is a strategy and it’s a model. It is not a program,” Juliana Obie told the Guilderland School Board on Dec. 9.

Obie is a regional director of United Community Schools, which was launched in 2012 in New York City by the United Federation of Teachers and is part of a national movement.

“The idea really came from our educators,” said Obie. “They kept saying, ‘We keep seeing this model in other places in the nation. Our students are failing. Our families need help.’” 

The goal is “to reimagine a community approach to educating the whole child in public schools serving children and families with high needs,” according to the United Community Schools website. 

Obie and her colleague, Lisette Roman, were invited to make a presentation at Guilderland by board member Tara Molloy-Grocki who several months ago raised the idea of Guilderland following a Community Schools model.

Board members sounded receptive to the idea at their Dec. 9 meeting and learned that two nearby city districts — Albany and Schenectady — have adopted the strategy while no local suburban districts have.

The model connects an entire school, including students, teachers, counselors and administrators, to an entire community, including parents, caregivers, local businesses, not-for-profits, and government agencies, to deal with whatever educational, social, or health issues prevent learning.

“We’re talking about, basically, the whole child,” said Obie.

Students’ needs are identified, said Roman, and then “wrap-around services” are adopted to meet those needs.

“Community Schools have measurable, delivered results ….,” Roman said. “We’ve seen increases in attendance, in academic performance. We’ve even seen a great connectedness … an increase in family engagement and just an overall stronger cohesiveness.”

Barriers to families have been eliminated, said Obie. “The school ends up being a community hub and a center and a safe place for families and community members that may not even have students in your district.”

Twenty-seven percent of Guilderland students are “economically disadvantaged,” according to data kept by the State Education Department from the last school year. While the district is still predominantly white, at 67 percent, it is rapidly becoming more diverse with Asian students making up 15 percent; Hispanic, 8 percent; Black, 5 percent; and multiracial students, 5 percent.

Five percent of Guilderland’s 4,821 students last year, or 260, were learning English as a new language.

Fifty-six Guilderland students were homeless, making up 1 percent of last year’s enrollment figures.

Different models

Obie said of a Community School, “It’s a place that folks can go to get resources they need.”

She went over three different models for setting up and sustaining a Community School:

— Community-based organizational model

A CBO hires a director to work collaboratively with the school’s principal and leadership team to carry out work at the school;

— University-assisted model

A university takes a lead role with local public schools often providing wrap-around supports to transform the school;

— Union model

The teachers’ union, school district, and community work together cooperatively with the union helping to fund it; and

— District model

The school district serves as lead partner, using district funds.

For the last seven years, Obie said, Binghamton University has funded the model for the Binghamton City School District. The university had earlier used federal funding for the model.

“The funding is on freeze right now,” said Obie. “So they use the university’s resources and push them into schools where students are doing programming; they’re running pantries; they are doing afterschool clubs and enrichment. And it really takes that financial burden off of the district.”

School districts in New York state that are not in the “big five” — New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers — often work together through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, Obie said. For Guilderland, that would be the Capital District BOCES.

Getting started

To start, Obie recommended that Guilderland conduct a needs assessment. Naming questions that would be explored, she said, “Where has your community shifted? What are the demographics like? What does housing look like in your community? What do resources and access look like in your community? Are folks struggling in your community? Are folks successful? Do you have a lot of migrant families or incoming families that you don’t know to serve?”

After evaluating its needs, the district would then look at its resources, Obie said, to determine what is currently being offered by staff. “Is there anybody that can shift into doing more Community School work or can there be a team that supports it?”

Some schools she has worked with, Obie said, “aren’t ready to support a full staff but use internal staff” where they get, for example, a teaching assistant to do the work. “We’ve seen social workers take on this work or even the role of an assistant superintendent,” she said, shifting to do more family and engagement work with a team of people.

Obie stressed that each Community School has a distinct approach to meet its own needs.

“It’s not a top-down model where you’re saying, ‘This is what everybody has to do.’ We’re saying, ‘This is what our particular school needs, and this is the group of people that are helping to get us there,’” said Obie.

The Albany district started partnering with United Community Schools in 2018, she said, and went from having five Community Schools to eight.

“We only function as their technical assistance provider and partner,” Obie said. “They share and develop along with us their community school coordinators with their state funding. ….  We offer one-on-one coaching in Albany … I provide professional learning sessions, which are full-day sessions, for them throughout the year around Community School work.”

Obie is also working to develop “strategic partnerships” with local universities.

“We want our teachers to be able to be better teachers,” Obie said, “and we want to help to remove those barriers so that they can just teach.”

Board response

Malloy-Grocki asked if board members could visit a Community School in Albany.

Obie suggested board members could attend the annual Community School conference, which is hosted in Albany and is scheduled this year for April 29 to May 1.

“The conference is a really good place, especially if you’re still trying to understand how to start this work,” said Obie. “There are great presenters that come from all over the nation.”

Board member Meredith Brière asked, “Is there anything that does outreach into the community to benefit those that maybe don’t have kids in the school district, who are retired, who are older or anything of that nature?”

“That’s typically what the Community School model should be,” Obie responded. “Because we’re talking about supporting your community and not just what’s inside the building. Your building just ends up being that hub in the center.”

The Community Schools in Albany, she said, for example, all have food pantries. “Massive amounts of toys” are given away during the holidays, she said.

“We also have coordinators who actually go and do work in the community because we see partnerships being reciprocal …. Our coordinators are actually pushing into the community and helping out other nonprofits and small organizations,” Obie said.

Board member Nina Kaplan asked if the idea is to streamline services under an umbrella.

Roman responded that in a lot of schools, “we’re so busy we silo ourselves.” A Community School coordinator or director becomes a “linchpin,” she said, to not just streamline services but to collect data to see where the needs are and “to know if what we’re doing is really having an impact.”

Board President Blanca Gonzalez-Parker asked if the University at Albany, which has an uptown campus partly in Guilderland, might be involved in a partnership.

“I’ve taken the lead with UAlbany to get the university to even understand what their role could be,” Obie responded. “This is a very long-term process.”

Currently, she said, she is working with the university’s education, social work, and cybersecurity departments.

She noted that the University of Pennsylvania has a center that pushes into all of the Philadelphia schools, work it has been doing for decades.

“So I’ve connected UAlbany and Siena [University] with them so that they can learn how to start this model,” said Obie.

She went on to say that some Community Schools have partnered with hospitals or health agencies and put centers in the school for dental clinics or vision clinics.

“There’s no reason why every school shouldn’t be a community school …,” Obie said. “I don’t care how good you think that things are … This work could really benefit everybody and really it’s just about everybody coming together.”

Most schools, she said, “say everything is for everybody.” She contrasted that with the Community School model: “We focus on who needs what and how can we uplift the folks that aren’t getting what they need.”

Kaplan brought up service learning requirements for students and asked if student volunteers were part of the Community Schools model.

“Most of our middle schools and high schools actually have students participate in monthly advisory boards,” said Roman, “because we want to ensure that there is voice and representation, not from the adults. We want to hear from the students.”

Roman also said students participate in services like food pantries. She spoke of a stigma students may feel so that they don’t use food panties.

“Because they’re embarrassed. They’re shy. Right? So what do we have?” Roman said. “We have our student ambassadors that are volunteering.” Those students receive both credit and experience, she said, adding, “But they also want to do it.”

In the Albany schools, Obie said, high school students in the barbering and cosmetology program give hair cuts to students, and during “picture day … make sure the students look how they want to look and feel good about themselves.”

Students in the building trades have built picnic tables and garden beds for Albany schools, she said.

Butterfield asked if that would help with “growing your own, and recruitment for future employment too.”

Roman and Obie both cited students who had been in Community Schools and now work for United Community Schools.

Brière noted that children aging out of the foster-care system make up nearly half of the unhoused individuals in the nation. She asked if those kids would be able to get assistance in a Community School model.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all model,” Obie responded. “If you are seeing in your area that this is a high need for you, then we can work to help you put a system in place to help that demographic of students.”

She also said, “With Community Schools, the sky’s the limit.”