In 2022, the New York City Office of Community Schools launched the Next Generation Community Schools pilot program to add academic enhancements to the existing community schools strategy. In this report, the authors examine how the pilot was designed and rolled out, how schools implemented the enhancements, and what factors enabled or hindered implementation. They also offer considerations for policymakers considering similar initiatives.

Rural schools often operate with limited access to academic, social, and mental health resources—constraints that can make it difficult to fully support student success. In California’s West Kern County, a cross-district collaborative took a unique approach. By pooling resources and coordinating the implementation of community schools, participating districts strengthened student supports, expanded access to services, and improved both student outcomes and overall well-being.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) program aims to expand the reach of the community school approach by providing grants to school districts, community-based organizations, and universities which, in turn, support partner schools as they seek to implement the approach and provide coordinated, comprehensive supports to children and their families. This snapshot examines whether the FSCS grant program helped expand the community school approach to schools that are consistent with program priorities: schools that are high poverty, located in rural areas, and new to or not yet fully implementing their community school approach. Analysis of recent data from the grant program and surveys of fiscal year 2023 grantees and their partner schools suggests that nearly all partner schools are high poverty and almost half are located in rural areas. In addition, the majority are new to or not yet fully implementing the community school approach and are new to the grant program.

The articles in this issue help demonstrate the growing movement for democratic partnerships between universities and their local schools—a movement that has been underway with the journal’s inception in 1989, particularly picking up steam over the last decade.

California’s historic investment in community schools enables local educational agencies (LEAs) to establish a network of community schools in their districts or counties. To support community schools at scale, LEAs institute supports that create coherence, collaboration, and efficiency across sites. This brief synthesizes findings from case studies of three LEAs that support urban and rural community school networks, highlighting how they have enabled effective implementation of the community school strategy in their unique settings. Findings show that across these agencies, leaders established multifaceted professional development structures, cultivated strategic partnerships, and instituted continuous improvement processes to scale and support community school implementation. They also hired district-level staff who facilitated these varied supports, allowing for sustained attention to transformation efforts across schools.

Community schools are an evidence-based strategy that unites students, families, educators, and community organizations to improve student learning and well-being. These schools leverage community resources to strengthen family-school partnerships and address local needs. During this webinar, attendees learned how community schools can lead to improvements in student achievement, chronic absence, and school climate, and heard from leaders in California and Kentucky who are applying community school approaches to improve student outcomes. This webinar was part of a three-part series meant to offer timely, nonpartisan research and real-world policy solutions, drawing from a broad range of state experiences. LPI and partners developed the 2026 Legislative Prep Series: Education Challenges and Solutions to give policymakers and others a leg up on the 2026 legislative session with the most up-to-date research, tools, and examples of effective, evidence-based state policy approaches. Speakers - Opening | Elena Silva, President and CEO, Learning Policy Institute - Research Presentation | Anna Maier, Senior Policy Advisor and Researcher, Learning Policy Institute - Moderator | Tiffany Miller, Senior Director of Federal and State Policy, Learning Policy Institute - California | Ingrid Roberson, Chief Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, California Department of Education - Kentucky Brigitte Blom, President & CEO, Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence Amanda Mays Bledsoe, State Senator, Kentucky General Assembly

Fact sheet explaining what a Community School is, and what recent research reveals.

This snapshot charts FSCS’s progress in two foundational areas: early activities that grantees must help partner schools complete and partnerships that grantees must finalize with local providers to deliver essential services to children in community schools.

This study assesses the extent to which the CCSPP grants effectively reached high-need schools and evaluates the impact of community school practices induced and supported by the CCSPP implementation grants on student outcomes, including attendance, suspensions, and academic achievement. The study compares changes in these outcomes over time between schools that received CCSPP grants (treatment group) and a matched group of similar schools that did not (control group). Employing a matched difference-in-differences technique, the analyses focus on the divergence in student outcomes between these groups after grant implementation.

This toolkit is designed to equip community school practitioners and partners in Idaho with the resources they need to secure funding, engage local support, and share their impact. Inside, you’ll find guidance on grant writing, leveraging partnerships, navigating federal funding opportunities, and advocating for your community school through storytelling and site visits. Additionally, real-life experts showcase how Idaho schools have successfully sustained and expanded their community school efforts during a recorded panel discussion.