VICTORY! Community Schools Resolution PASSES Unanimously

July 31, 2020

On Tuesday, July 28th, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Board of Trustees voted unanimously to adopt our Community Schools Coalition Resolution. During the meeting, Dr. Whitehurst-Payne emphasized how our work and model of bringing diverse community interests together to work towards a common vision, represents a “paradigm shift” for our schools and the district. This is a huge win for our communities. 

For the past two years, CPI and our partners in the coalition have researched the effectiveness of community schools, held community forums to discuss the challenges, opportunities, needs and resources of the SDUSD, drafted this resolution, and advocated for its adoption. Though our work on community schools existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis has highlighted why community schools are precisely what our communities need. 

Community schools don’t just bring together parents, students, teachers, and community members, they integrate the community into the visioning, decision making, and everyday life of the school. This allows schools to use the unique strengths of the neighborhood to address the unique needs of their communities in it. We believe community schools are crucial to advancing educational, racial, and economic equity at our local public schools. We believe that community schools are the way to ensure that Black, Brown, and low-income families will have schools that center our voices and our vision for our schools. 

Now that the Board of Trustees have adopted  our resolution, we are going to begin the work to implement the vision laid out in the resolution, so that communities can begin the work of creating their community schools in San Diego. You can read the full resolution here. 

If you have any questions about next steps and the community schools work, please email us at communityschools@cpisandiego.org. To learn more about the San Diego Community Schools Coalition and our model for community schools, you can watch the video from our recent webinar.

We proudly share this win with our coalition partners: Alliance San Diego, Association of Raza Educators (ARE), SDSU Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education (DLE), Global Action Research Center (ARC), Parent Student Resident Organization (PSRO), San Diego Education Association (SDEA), SAY San Diego, Urban League San Diego County, and Youth Will.

Thank you for supporting our community schools work. Stayed tuned for more ways to support and participate as the work moves into the implementation phase. Sign up for our email list and check the box for “Educational Equity” to stay up to date on our community schools work.