Community Schools Action Team

Ensuring early fully-resourced community schools for 100% of county residents. The 100% New Mexico action team identifies challenges, researches solutions and supports organizations in strengthening schools and enhancing the learning experience by providing funding for every school to adopt the community school model. This means school acquire the funding and staff to have a full time community school director, extra students tutors and navigators to help students access vital community services. A community school has the resources to welcome and support parents with evening and weekend support programs. The model can also include a school based health clinic. The long-term goal is creating a countywide system of community schools with collaboration and coordination with all city government, county government and non-governmental organizations within the county’s borders.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team collects and analyzes data then identifies gaps in current school programming and support services. The 100% Community survey data, including informational interviews with residents of all communities within the county’s borders, reveal which populations and communities lack easy access to fully-resourced school with additional support programs for vulnerable students. The survey also reveals why fully-resourced schools with extra services and health care services may be difficult to access. Difficulties may include a lack of awareness of the community school model, lack of awareness of support programs, lack of transport to programs, lack of easy-to-access to services because of times of programs.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on identifying which schools currently need capacity-building in order to meet the need. The team identifies partnerships to improve services. This can be done through a process of continuous quality improvement (the data-driven “assess-plan-act-evaluate” process).

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on identifying which private sector businesses can help schools become fully-resourced and adopt, if they wish, the community school model. The team works to create partnerships between businesses and school support systems and programs.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on identifying how to use technology, including websites and apps, to increase awareness of parent supports, increase resources to provide services, and increase alignment of parent support services across all cities and communities within the county’s borders. The team also works to address the digital divide to increase access for all county residents to mobile devices and the Internet through community access points.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on reaching all county residents in order to mobilize community teams to address the need for public school supports. The team works to engage all county residents who have free time (retirees, college students, etc.) to support fully resourcing every school. The team also works to create opportunities for all county residents to share their ideas for problem solving.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on strengthening the capacity of all schools to increase their capacity to take on the components of a community school, including school-based health care, student supports and parent supports.The team focuses on how to fund schools to adopt the “community school” model with staff who can focus on creating school-based programs to support at-risk students (due to social adversity and adverse childhood experiences) and support parents and caregiving grandparents.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on identifying which individuals and programs working with local higher education can support the community schools model and overall student program development and improvement efforts. This includes identifying support for surveying, data analysis, and researching solutions, along with engaging students and staff in fully supporting all public school improvement efforts.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on identifying the capacity of city and county government to strengthen their current public school support efforts and expand them to meet the need. This includes a special focus on meeting the needs of the county’s most vulnerable students, parents and caregiving grandparents. Teams will recommend to local government the most up-to-date methods and software to accurately track school-based improvement program effectiveness.

The 100% New Mexico community schools action team focuses on identifying which programs the federal and state government offer to support the development of community schools. This process includes networking, advocating and grant writing.

The 100% New Mexico community action team focuses on the long-term goal of creating a county-city “Department of Community Schools” to focus on supporting the development of community schools (working in partnership with school leadership). This includes surveying residents on their access to fully-resourced public schools, their need for school-based student support programs and why they might be difficult to access. This proposed department could also support ongoing research in community schools and related programs across the county.