Becoming a Community School: A Study of Oakland Unified School District Community School Implementation, 2015-2016
Description:
Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is engaged in the process of becoming a "full service community schools district." Since 2014, OUSD has partnered with the Gardner Center to support their efforts to assess, enhance, and scale their community schools work. We began by working with the district to develop a System Strategy Map to articulate the district's goals, desired outcomes, and key elements of the community school initiative. Our first year of research tested this theory of action by identifying key programmatic and organizational elements of community schools at mature sites, as well as initial trends in student outcomes. This report presents findings from the second year of our research collaboration (2015-2016) which focused on three primary areas: 1) the role of the district in supporting community school implementation; 2) the experience of newer community school sites, as well as district staff, to better understand the process by which schools become community schools; and 3) understanding the expanding reach of community school implementation in OUSD as well as the relationship between community school participation and student outcomes through analysis of available administrative data.
Suggested Citation:
Fehrer, K., Leos-Urbel, J., Messner, E., and Riley, N. (2016). Becoming a Community School: A Study of Oakland Unified School District Community School Implementation, 2015-2016. Stanford, CA: John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.