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When Latoya Ramjit struggles to make ends meet, she turns to a food pantry that provides milk, juice, cereal, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even cleaning supplies and hygiene products. She doesn鈥檛 have to travel far, because it鈥檚 at her daughter鈥檚 elementary school, P.S. 67, just steps from their apartment in the Fort Greene community in Brooklyn, New York. Ramjit, who鈥檚 president of the PTA, helped found the pantry four years ago, certain it would become indispensable at a school where 99% of students are low-income and some are homeless. 

The food pantry at P.S. 67, also known as the Charles A. Dorsey Community School, is stocked by the . This relationship, along with an alliance with , which provides wraparound services including mental health care, has helped transform P.S. 67 from a failing school in danger of closing to a thriving community school that鈥檚 a hub of services for students, their families, and the neighborhood. 

The idea behind community schools is that poverty, housing instability, trauma, and subpar health care impede students鈥� ability to learn, so schools must mindfully address these challenges. While about , they鈥檙e most prevalent in New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the $200 million Community Schools Initiative in 2014 with the goal of creating 100 community schools. Over time, they鈥檝e grown to 267 schools serving 135,000 students in low-income areas. According to  by the Rand Corporation released in January, they鈥檙e working. 

Community schools are improving graduation rates and math scores, while reducing chronic absenteeism and disciplinary incidents. And they鈥檙e expanding across the country.

This particular reform is a departure from the punitive accountability, standardized testing, and school choice education reforms of the past 20 years that have disregarded poverty鈥檚 impact on test scores, shut stakeholders out of the decision-making process, applied market solutions to schools that function on the basis of human relationships not profits and losses, and diverted funding from public schools to privately managed charter and voucher schools. In her new book, , education policy analyst and historian Diane Ravitch illustrates that these corporate education reforms have resulted in , a narrowed curriculum, attacks on teachers, and public school closures, which devastate communities.

Since becoming mayor in 2014, de Blasio has moved away from his predecessor Mike Bloomberg鈥檚 tactic of closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with smaller schools and new staff. Though Bloomberg touted  as a result of his reforms, his claim deserves greater scrutiny. A veteran teacher in Upper Manhattan who asked to remain anonymous recalled that  were rampant during Bloomberg鈥檚 regime. Pressured to increase graduation rates, administrators persuaded students to make up a year鈥檚 worth of failed classes by doing a worksheet packet, writing a few essays, and taking online quizzes where they could easily look up the answers. 鈥淎fter they submitted this mediocre work to their teachers, we were told to pass them,鈥� the teacher said. It resulted in the high graduation rates  in his bid for the White House.

It鈥檚 emblematic of a corporate education reform movement that鈥檚 tall on rhetoric but short on results. However, a resistance is growing across the country: Parents are  of standardized testing, communities are , and stakeholders are marching with striking teachers for better funding in the . The expansion of community schools can be considered part of this resistance, and their common-sense approach of providing wraparound services and prioritizing stakeholder engagement are precisely what Ravitch and other experts advocate for. In fact,  was in the agreement that ended the LA teachers鈥� strike a year ago.

During de Blasio鈥檚 January 28 news conference at P.S. 67 to celebrate the findings of the Rand report, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that community schools happen 鈥渋n an organic way, not to the community but with the community.鈥� Echoing the importance of stakeholder involvement, PTA president Ramjit said, 鈥淭he adage 鈥榠t takes a village to raise a child鈥� is true here at P.S. 67,鈥� noting that more parents have gotten involved with the school since it became a community hub. In addition to the food pantry that鈥檚 open to families twice a month, the school also offers students onsite dental exams, vision screenings, and an asthma case manager.

Each community school forms an alliance with a community-based organization that addresses its unique needs. For P.S. 67, that organization is the aforementioned Partnership with Children, which stations a community director at the school to concentrate on attendance issues and parental involvement, allowing Principal Kyesha Jackson to focus on academics. Partnership with Children also provides social workers and counselors who connect families to legal and housing resources. Furthermore, they run in-class workshops that help students navigate their feelings, which helped Ramjit鈥檚 daughter overcome her shyness. And they provide individual counseling and group therapy that uses art to work through trauma. 

The focus on mental health is grounded in neuroscience, according to PWC鈥檚 CEO Margaret Crotty.  found that the trauma of food insecurity, homelessness, violence, and other adversities causes chronic stress. Without intervention, chronic stress becomes toxic stress, a neurological condition affecting the parts of the brain that enable kids to focus on their studies and behave in school. The Harvard center found that toxic stress can lead to depression, substance abuse, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic illness later in life. A preventive measure is connecting students to social workers who provide consistent, nurturing care.

This  tackles physical, socio-emotional, and academic needs equally. While benefiting individual students, it also addresses systemic concerns. For example,  such as positive reinforcement, talking circles, and community building instead of  including suspensions and expulsions create a supportive school culture, according to Derek Anello, PWC鈥檚 VP of Programs. They also mitigate the chance that students will end up in the , which refers to the punitive discipline that starts in pre-K and pushes kids out of school, onto the street, and into the criminal justice system. Boys of color and  are disproportionately affected, but girls of color also face biased disciplinary action. 

Community schools also emphasize attendance. Obviously, students have to be present to learn, but it goes deeper than that. When kids are absent a lot, chances are there鈥檚 trouble at home: Perhaps a family鈥檚 been evicted or there鈥檚 no heat in their apartment in the dead of winter. By identifying these issues, community directors are able to connect families to services that can help them. Conversely, when attendance is up, it鈥檚 sometimes the result of enrichment classes that students enjoy, which informs the school鈥檚 decision to offer more of them.

That鈥檚 because community schools prioritize student engagement. During the news conference at P.S. 67, Mayor de Blasio asserted, 鈥淜ids enjoy school and can鈥檛 wait to get there!鈥� referring to classes such as art and robotics that spark creativity, and , a summer literacy and cultural program that helps children avoid . This is a response to the standardized testing craze that forced schools to 鈥�,鈥� crowding out untested subjects and killing kids鈥� joy for learning.  

鈥淥ur children are more than just scores; they鈥檙e human beings,鈥� Councilman Mark Treyger, a former teacher, declared, implying that focusing primarily on tests is dehumanizing. Historian Ravitch has gone even further, calling it  on numerous occasions.

Encouragingly, math and English scores are up at P.S. 67, as are attendance rates. Meanwhile, discipline incidents are down. Across the 113 (out of 267) community schools Rand studied over three years, it found improvements in attendance, math scores, and graduation and promotion rates. Among elementary and middle community schools, disciplinary incidents were down compared to non-community schools. Furthermore, behavioral incidents declined among Black students and students with disabilities. But disciplinary incidents among high school students didn鈥檛 decline. And while math scores improved, English scores did not. Still, the results are promising enough for Treyger to declare, 鈥淓very school should be a community school.鈥�

The key to making this happen is patience, combining community schools with other programs, and a financial investment mixed with careful implementation. When a reporter asked de Blasio about the lack of progress in English scores, he explained that change happens slowly鈥攃hild by child and school by school. Furthermore, he was confident that the collaboration with other programs such as , , , and  will continue to move the needle. But careful execution is vital: An earlier initiative, , was rolled out haphazardly and failed to produce the desired results despite its $773 million cost. Still, money is essential鈥攚ithout proper funding, good outcomes are impossible in NYC or anywhere else. 

鈥淥ur kids have endless potential,鈥� de Blasio said. 鈥淚f we help them tap it, they have endless potential.鈥�