About Us
The New York State Community Schools Network (NYS CSN) is a statewide coalition that supports and advances the development of all local and statewide community school initiatives.
Our Mission
The NYS CSN advocates to develop, promote, and sustain community schools in collaboration with government, local school districts, unions, and community partners. Through a diverse coalition of community-based agencies, school leaders, families, teachers, and statewide advocates, we champion effective community school policies so that children and families can thrive.
What We Do
The NYS CSN:
Sets and aligns state budget and policy priorities around community schools based on input from the field;
Supports federal budget and policy efforts to promote investments in community schools;
Hosts an annual Advocacy Day to promote what’s working for community schools and advocate for changes that will better support community schools across the state;
Keeps the field updated on relevant advocacy opportunities, events, and resources through a statewide listserv;
Collaborates with the New York State Education Department and the NYS Community Schools Technical Assistance Centers; and
Serves as the NYS affiliate to the national Institute for Educational Leadership’s Coalition for Community Schools.
What are Community Schools?
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Why Community Schools?
1. Community schools work.
The Community School strategy is a cost-effective way to maximize multiple resources and funding streams to transform a school into a place where educators, local community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student success.
By leveraging funds and resources that would not otherwise be available to schools, the community schools strategy creates a strong “return on investment” by ensuring that the funds can be leveraged efficiently and effectively to meet students’ needs.
A 2019 study shows that each $1 invested in the Coordinator returns approximately $7.11 in net benefits.
New York’s Rome Connected Community Schools program reported an even higher ROI upward of $20 for every $1 invested in community school initiatives.
In NYC, UFT’s United Community Schools data showed that a $100,000 investment to hire a community school director can bring in more than $600,000 in services and grants to the school community.
A RAND report published in 2020 shows that the community school model is working in New York City. Among other positive findings, New York City’s community schools were found to have:
A positive impact on student attendance in all school levels
A reduction in disciplinary incidents for elementary and middle school students
A positive impact on math achievement and credit accumulation in the third and final year
Improvement in school climate for elementary and middle schools.
2. Community schools meet needs.
If students are coming to their classes hungry; dealing with stress; lacking adequate mental or physical health care; or dealing with other social-emotional or hardships, it will only be that much harder to focus on academics. Community schools address these barriers and support all students in holistic and integrated ways.
Community schools effectively leverage well-established partnerships built on trust to mobilize their community in times of uncertainty or hardship. These partnerships can often ensure that things like food, books, diapers for families with young children, and other necessities are available to those who need them, or that when a child experiences a loss of a parent or caregiver due to death or illness, they have a support system.
Community schools can leverage funding streams and local partnerships to provide additional mental health services to meet the students, including mental health care through School Based Health Centers.
Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, Community Schools were able to mobilize quickly and effectively to support the social, emotional, physical, and learning needs of students and their families as outlined in Community Schools, An Effective, Evidence-Based Strategy for Reopening New York Schools. Community Schools tap into their strong relationships, relational trust, agility, and coordination to help schools and their communities better respond to and recover from the pandemic.
Attendance data shows that we have a crisis in attendance/engagement in schools. We need to bring in extra hands to ensure schools can reach out and build relationships. Core principles integral to community schools, including leveraging partnerships, reliance on data, and focus on family engagement have positive impacts on school attendance in many cases. The 2020 RAND report on NYC Community Schools found improved attendance in all three years of the study.
3. Community schools are hyper-local.
Community schools engage local educators, partners, families, and community members in a deep and collaborative process to develop a comprehensive understanding of local needs and assets.
4. Community schools are everywhere.
Community schools work in any setting; rural, suburban, or urban, because it is place-based work that is locally contextualized and adapted based on a community’s needs.
The funds made available through public funding can make it much easier for any school to become a Community School. There is a strong field with a great deal of expertise that is ready to help students in our communities do better academically, prevent mental health issues, and support the whole community's capacity to thrive.
How Community Schools Advance Critical Supports
Community Schools leverage programs, services, and interventions to ensure that students and their families are supported and engaged. These programs are not only a part of the scaffolding of community schools, but they are critical for ensuring an equitable recovery for young people and families.
Afterschool programs
A key pillar of the CS strategy, afterschool, summer, and other expanded learning opportunities are critical to expanding a school's capacity to improve student success academically and beyond-academic outcomes. Afterschool, summer, and other expanded learning programs complement what students learn at school: These programs provide more time for deeper learning, creative spaces for hands-on projects, and opportunities to explore careers. Through their expertise, resources, and relationships, community-based afterschool programs help to strengthen the infrastructure for integrated supports, including the incorporation of high-quality informal instructional programming and project-based learning, and social emotional support. In addition, afterschool, summer, and expanded learning programs are often trusted partners for families and community leaders, with many of their staff part of the community they serve. Expanded learning opportunities do not only help provide wraparound services for students and families, but also provide a network of support for school administrations and leaders.
Resource:
Jacobson, R., Jamal, S. S., Jacobson, L., & Blank, M. J. (2013, November 30). The growing convergence of community schools and expanded learning opportunities. Coalition for Community Schools. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED557083
Socioemotional learning
Community schools are epicenters of caring. As such, community schools build relationships with students, families, and partners to support students’ wellbeing. With a focus on meeting the needs of the whole child, community schools partner with local agencies to put in place comprehensive and integrated systems, programs, and practices to address the academic and non-academic factors that impact the lives of students. In this way, community schools support students’ physical, social/emotional, and intellectual development by removing the barriers to learning so that students thrive.
Family engagement
Fifty years of research on the positive impacts of engaged families in education is clear, and the benefits are particularly profound for community schools. When families and educators collaborate, students are more engaged learners who earn higher grades and take more challenging classes, student attendance and grade and graduation rates improve, and disciplinary issues decrease. Community schools prioritize meaningful and asset-based engagement of families and community partners needed to create the systems, structures, and supports for successful family-school engagement partnerships to thrive. Strong home, school and community connections are core elements of effective and equitable teaching and learning practice linked to school improvement goals and outcomes. Families and community members, for their part, feel welcome, supported, and valued as essential partners of the school community. However, according to researcher Dr. Karen Mapp, capacity building in four critical areas:
Capabilities (skills and knowledge),
Connections (networks),
Cognition (shifting mindsets, beliefs, values), and
Confidence (self-efficacy)
are a prerequisite to developing, implementing, and sustaining effective family-school and community engagement efforts in community schools.
Resource: Dual Capacity Framework