The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman is a VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues. Listen below and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.
America’s schoolchildren are in trouble. Just this week, test scores were released that show math and reading performance of 13-year olds in the U.S. hit the lowest level in decades. In Vermont, just 27% of eighth graders were proficient in math in 2022, down from 47% in 2013.
This academic decline is compounded by what the U.S. surgeon general has dubbed “the health crisis of our time” in youth mental health.
What can be done to stop this downward slide?
Around the country and in a handful of Vermont communities, community schools are succeeding against the odds at improving student outcomes and family well-being.
In 2021, Vermont passed the Community Schools Act, which provided more than $1 million in grants for community school pilot projects in Hazen Union School, Vergennes Union Elementary School, White River Valley Middle School in Bethel, the Cabot School and North Country Supervisory Union.
What are community schools? It is a strategy that encourages deep partnerships among students, schools, families and communities. Schools become hubs of learning and engagement, and a powerful tool to tackle extreme inequality and racial injustice.
Community schools address the needs of the whole child. If a student is struggling because they are hungry or unhoused, they need more than tutoring. That’s why many community schools include partnerships with local health centers, legal clinics, housing assistance and other social services. The schools help the student by helping the family.
For the past two years, I’ve been researching community schools for a book that I co-wrote with the founders of this movement, “The Community Schools Revolution: Building Partnerships, Transforming Lives, Advancing Democracy” (free download at communityschoolsrevolution.org).
We explored the remarkable impact that these schools have had in thousands of schools, especially in under-resourced communities. For example, at the Oyler School in Cincinnati, once dubbed a “dropout factory,” high school graduation rates rose from around 30% to over 90%. The entire Cincinnati city public school system has now adopted the community school model.
At a middle school in Brooklyn, math proficiency increased more than seven-fold, and English proficiency quadrupled, and the school’s bilingual debate team has won numerous citywide and national debate competitions. The success of this model is why New York City has opened more than 400 community schools in the past dozen years.
“Schools have almost put up walls and become fortresses up on a hill and separate from their communities,” said Jason Di Giulio, principal of Hazen Union School in Hardwick. This isolation has been exacerbated by the national epidemic of school shootings.
Hazen Union, one of Vermont’s pilot community schools, is trying to “break down the walls of school, let the community in, send the students out, have learning happening all over the place and recogniz(e) that learning doesn’t just happen sitting in a chair in a classroom,” Di Giulio said. One result is that Hazen Union is now drawing students from outside its district.
Jane Quinn, who directed the National Center for Community Schools, said community schools have had a significant impact on reducing chronic absence and increasing student engagement.
“Because community schools are involved in the community and are getting students more involved in their communities, we’ve seen dramatic increases in student engagement, and that is not trivial,” she said. “We have known for 30 years that student connectedness to school is the protective factor against all of the major risk factors.”
On this Vermont Conversation, we discuss the impact of community schools with Di Giulio, Hazen Union community school coordinator Dani Smith and Vergennes Union Elementary School Principal Matthew DeBlois. We are also joined by three founders of the national community school movement, Marty Blank, Jane Quinn and Lisa Villarreal.
“The school isn’t just that place on the hill that’s shining, It’s really connected,” Di Giulio said. “The community’s dreams for us are similar to our dreams for us, too.”
