NEW Leading Change: Resources for Principal Preparation and Professional Development.
The Coalition for Community Schools, with support from the MetLife Foundation, has created a one-stop-shop for principal preparation and professional development programs and practicing principals. On this website, you will find the best research and tools on nine essential topics that will help principals effectively engage communities and families. Please visit the website.
NEW Briefing on Full Service Community Schools; March 27, 2008.
The Department of Education has issued the grant announcement for the Full Service Community Schools program. Grant applications are due April 15, 2008. A total of $4.9 Million is available for awards ranging from $75,000-$500,000. The estimated average size of awards is $415,000, and the maximum award is $500,000 per year. View the announcement: Text or PDF
Coalition Strategic Planning
The Coalition's new Strategic Plan calls for developing more and more effective community schools by 2014. Click to read more.
Community Schools National Awards for Excellence
The 2007 award recognized three schools and three communities:
Schools
Communities
Carlin Springs Elementary School, Arlington, VA
Independence, MO
Fair Street Elementary School, Gainesville, GA
Multnomah County, OR
Sayre High School, Philadelphia, PA
Tukwila, WA
The Coalition honored the award winners at a breakfast on Capitol Hill on June 14th in the Energy and Commerce Hearing Room at the Rayburn House Office Building. The breakfast included remarks by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who recently introduced the Full Service Community Schools Act. This was followed by an in-depth panel discussion with award winners who articulated the focus on the results they are achieving for young people, their families and their communities.
This tool features specific results that community schools seek for students, families and communities, and indicators for measuring progress toward these results. Also included in this resource is a tool to guage the capacity of a community school to attain results, a research document that supports the indicators we have identified, a menu of data sources for each indicator and results frameworks that have been developed by local initiatives. We would like to include your results framework on our website. If you have one you are willing to share, please send it to or contact Shital Shah at 202-822-8405x100
PTA Magazine Features Community Schools
Community schools are the focus of the February/March issue of the national PTA magazine, Our Children. The issue emphasizes the ways in which schools engage their communities to improve student success. The Coalition is grateful to the National PTA, a Coalition partner, for their focus on community schools. To read the magazine, click here.
Communities In Schools and the Public Education Network (PEN) Testify Before Senate
Dan Cardinali, from CIS and Wendy Puriefoy, from PEN were invited to testify on March 28 before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee during a hearing on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Click here to read the testimony or to download audio clips.
NEW Book about Community Schools Released
Dewey's Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform, By Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy and John Puckett
Ira Harkavy, Chair of the Coalition for Community Schools, Lee Benson and John Puckett’s new book is described as a “timely, persuasive, and hopeful [reexamination of] John Dewey's idea of schools, specifically community schools, as the best places to grow a democratic society that is based on racial, social, and economic justice. The authors assert that American colleges and universities bear a responsibility for-and would benefit substantially from-working with schools to develop democratic schools and communities.
Community and Family Engagement: Principals Share What Works.
Informed by the work of principals, this paper finds six keys to community engagement that help school leaders engage families, staff, partners and the larger community in the life of the school. To read the paper, click here.
Community schools are the focus of the February/March issue of the national PTA magazine, Our Children. The issue emphasizes the ways in which schools engage their communities to improve student success. The Coalition is grateful to the National PTA, a Coalition partner, for their focus on community schools. To read the magazine, 
Dewey's Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform, By Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy and John Puckett