Welcome to Community Schools, a monthly email newsletter highlighting public schools using the “community school” approach to empower parents, students, educators, and their communities.

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How a new approach to public schooling is spurring economic development. Journalist Jeff Bryant reports that Erie, Pennsylvania’s school district not only increased attendance using the community school approach but also sees it as an “economic development initiative” to help the struggling Rust Belt city. AlterNet

How you can start a community school. The National Education Association’s Community Schools Institute explains how teachers, school districts, students, parents, and community groups can come together to propose a transformation for the public school. National Education Association

“More than just a school.” Minnesota’s Post Bulletin reports: “Riverside Central Elementary, located just a few blocks from the heart of the city, is technically a school. It has all the telltale features: desks in the classrooms, food in the cafeteria. There’s a principal and teachers and students. All the boxes are marked. And yet, there are some who would argue that it’s a little bit more than just a school.” Post Bulletin

More on Minnesota’s community schools. Thirteen schools statewide are receiving new grants from the Minnesota Department of Education. KBJR News

New community schools in New Mexico. Mesilla Park Elementary is the latest school to be recognized as a community school in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the sixth in the Las Cruces Public Schools district. Las-Cruces Sun News

ICYMI. Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest (and author of the new book, The Privatization of Everything), writes in the Washington Post: “Community schools reach out and listen to parents, and that is what most parents really want … 80 percent of the parents surveyed recently by the National Parents Union said that after the eye-opening experience of the 2020-21 school year, they want schools to ask for more parental input and feedback.” The Washington Post

Photo by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages.