When the Community Becomes the School--Jermaine Kennedy, EdD

As the Director of Education at the Homeless Families Foundation, Dr. Jermaine Kennedy develops positive youth enrichment programming for marginalized and vulnerable students. He also cultivates partnerships with community leaders, organizations, and agencies to share community knowledge and current needs in the nonprofit sector to educate young people and provide stability for families

Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a number of challenges; while we have heard a great deal about those challenges on television, I recently experienced them in my own home: “I feel like I’m not learning. It’s just frustrating...teachers act like they don’t understand. I can’t get the help that I need...teachers can’t sit you down and show you over a camera. Plus, the teachers just give us a bunch of busy work to do in class, and then we have more busy work for homework. So that’s why I keep getting distracted with Youtube and my cell phone.” My 10th-grade son made this comment expressing his frustration with remote learning. His comments as well as those of other Black teenagers inform my approach to rethinking urban education through promoting community schooling. The community must become the school.

The COVID-19 pandemic has overburdened the capacity, function, and outcomes of our educational system. This system was already strained in many respects. Before the pandemic, educational professionals recognized the need for systemic change to aid students whose needs were unmet by educational policy and practice. Many U.S. children were locked out of “good” schools due to persistent inequalities: concentrated poverty, racial isolation, and inadequate educational spending. More than half of the nation’s schoolchildren—approximately 25 million—live in low-income households, the highest proportion since this statistic became available. These children face societal neglect. Many students experience food insecurity, homelessness, violence, or persistent hardship, resulting in chronic stress and trauma that impacts behavior and learning readiness. As a result, Black Americans are forced into conditions that elevate their risk for COVID-19, consequently placing Black children at the epicenter of loss and community disruption.

Sound education requires healthy communities. In response, models of school-community collaborations have re-emerged to address the educational challenges in the Black community. Although school-community partnerships in education are not new, a systemic and integrated approach to community engagement is an innovative education reform strategy. Partnerships increase and promote social ties between schools, families, neighbors, and community organizations. These increased ties help to build school-community social capital. Schools can frequently connect to resources in the forms of information, supplies, and other services to benefit students and families.

Community involvement in schools can be traced back to the 19th century. During that time, community members and families were active in many aspects of school operations such as the curriculum, scheduling, and hiring practices. Community schools were based on two ideas: one, the purpose of schooling was to educate students for democratic citizenship; and two, communities and schools were inextricably connected and interdependent as partners. These partnerships showcased intentional efforts to foster collaboration between communities and schools to meet the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable in America’s expanding communities. For many Blacks in the 19thcentury, community schooling served as a pathway for freedom.

Blacks in the North and the South understood the importance of community schooling. During the 19th century, community involvement was developed through literary societies. In the North, books and other texts (e.g., pamphlets, government documents, newspapers) became ammunition to fuel and elevate Black lives. Reading and writing were more than a set of skills for African Americans to possess; they were pathways to define their lives and advocate for civil rights.

Before the Civil War and shortly after, enslaved Blacks created educational institutions with very little support and resources in the South. Free and enslaved Blacks in the South joined together to provide Black children educational opportunities through a string of independently black operated schools. After emancipation in 1865, Blacks created schools designed to advance their own agendas. Blacks regarded formal education as the panacea against poverty, bondage, and powerlessness. These efforts ultimately led to universal public education in the South.

School-community partnerships in the current context present an opportunity to reimagine schooling and education as accessible and responsive to all students and parents. This is especially true for those whom existing policies, programs, curricula, and practices have silenced their voices, stifled their potential, and limited their successes. We must envision a program of education that will best serve all students and parents needs and interests. In doing so, it is essential to give special attention to Black students that have been consistently failed by the current education system.

Ultimately, looking back to the 19th-century community school framework can serve as a pathway to meet students holistic needs. A framework that centers students' needs, listens to their concerns and aspirations, and responds to their life situations. Being student-centered means offering several types of opportunities, such as powerful learning, integrated health, social supports, and authentic family and community engagement.