Community Schools in Los Angeles Unified: Transforming Teaching and Learning

In 2021, California made a historic $4.1 billion investment in the growth and spread of the community schools across the state through the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP). The CCSPP offers planning grants, implementation grants, and extension grants for local educational agencies (LEAs) to launch, scale, and sustain community school initiatives. Designed to build system capacity, CCSPP dedicates $200 million for technical assistance—delivered via statewide, regional, and county offices of education—to support LEAs in developing networks of schools and embedding community school practices.

This case study—one of three examining how California LEAs have used CCSPP funds to build systemic supports for community schools—focuses on Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). It examines how LAUSD’s Community Schools Initiative (CSI) developed a robust support system that centers inclusive, deeper learning and established school-level systems and processes to sustain those practices. The findings provide valuable insights for district and school leaders seeking to advance community school transformation focused on inclusive classroom practice and academic achievement.

Los Angeles Unified School District’s Community Schools Initiative

Spanning more than 1,300 schools and serving more than 500,000 students, LAUSD is the second-largest school district in the nation. In 2017, LAUSD formally launched its CSI through a board resolution and collective bargaining agreement with United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), aiming to promote educational equity, eliminate opportunity gaps, and create racially just, relationship-centered schools.

The CSI has grown steadily through local investment and state funding. LAUSD allocates annual funding to community schools to fund a community school coordinator and community representative at each school site. Though flexible to each school’s context, these roles center on partnership development, family engagement, and data-driven planning; the community school coordinator leads these areas of work, while the community representative supports day-to-day implementation and relationship building between home and school. Building on this foundation, LAUSD has secured over $83 million in funding from the state through its California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) and has expanded its initiative to include 70 community schools. Community schools in LAUSD are supported by strong systems-level infrastructure, including governance structures, strategic partnerships, and a comprehensive array of professional learning opportunities for community school staff.

LAUSD’s CSI is aligned with Community Schools Forward’s Essentials for Community School Transformation Framework, which extends the traditional four pillars of community schools—integrated student supports, expanded learning time, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership—by adding two core features: (1) a culture of belonging, safety, and care, and (2) rigorous, community-connected classroom instruction. Together, these elements advance a holistic approach in which community schools integrate whole child strategies across all aspects of schooling.

As a core focus of its CSI, LAUSD has prioritized classroom practices that are inclusive, community-connected, project-based, and career-focused and established roles, systems, and structures to support the implementation of these approaches. These include extensive professional development opportunities for educators and out-of-classroom staff, the development of CSI and school-based positions that bridge the CSI’s vision for community school classroom practice with school-level implementation, and intentional cross-department collaboration to align community school approaches with other district initiatives that support secondary schools.

Not only has LAUSD’s CSI invested in teaching and learning in meaningful ways, analyses show that the first cohort of CCSPP community schools in LAUSD made greater academic gains than comparable non-CSI schools serving similar students in the district and achieved outcomes that exceeded their prepandemic achievement levels.

The results underscore the importance of the CSI’s focus on classroom practice and make the initiative a compelling case study for other LEAs aiming to enhance instructional quality within community schools.

Findings

Recognizing that integrating additional services and supports for families is not the end goal, but instead is an essential component of a broader transformation effort to improve learning opportunities and outcomes for students, LAUSD has made inclusive, deeper learning approaches a central focus of its CSI. The CSI has coalesced its vision for classroom practice around three key priorities: (1) welcoming and inclusive classroom environments; (2) community-connected, project-based learning (PBL); and (3) the integration of Linked Learning—which offers career-focused pathways that meaningfully bridge high school education and real-world experience—and community school approaches at the secondary level. As these were implemented, related practices and changes took place at the two study schools. Key findings include the following:

• The CSI has supported the widespread adoption of welcoming and inclusive classroom practices in community schools. It has done this through professional development sessions that engaged staff from nearly all of the district’s community schools. These sessions have intentionally targeted educators as well as classified staff. The two schools in this case study reported shifts in classroom practice—including changes to the arrangement of classroom and school spaces, more inclusive curricula and events, and the use of restorative practices—which they attributed to their participation in CSI professional learning.
   
• LAUSD’s CSI has made community-connected PBL a cornerstone of its vision for classroom practice in community schools. The district has supported these approaches through professional development opportunities, the creation of a school-based PBL champion role at every community school, and funding for teacher collaboration time. The CSI tailored professional learning on community-connected PBL to schools’ experience levels, placing greater emphasis on those new to PBL—an approach that proved effective for both schools in this study, one just beginning and the other more advanced. Observations of classroom instruction—such as integrating science lessons into a school garden revival and designing mini-golf courses to teach geometry—reflected the CSI’s vision for community-connected, student-centered practice.
   
• LAUSD integrated its CSI with other district-level strategies that share common goals, including Linked Learning, thereby reinforcing the strengths of each. This process has included joint planning with LAUSD’s Linked Learning and Career Technical Education (CTE) Department, the development of resources for schools pursuing both approaches, and positions jointly funded by the CSI and the Linked Learning/CTE Department to support both initiatives. The CSI has also created the role of a secondary specialist who supports collaboration across departments and works with secondary community schools to strengthen postsecondary readiness opportunities. At the secondary school in this study, a jointly funded work-based learning coordinator built industry partnerships and integrated real-world learning into Linked Learning instruction, while the community school coordinator expanded learning opportunities through field trips, internships, and oversight of the school’s Linked Learning Advisory Board.
   
• The CCSPP implementation grants drove measurable improvements in student outcomes at LAUSD’s community schools. Compared to similar high-need schools that did not receive CCSPP grants, participating schools reduced chronic absence by approximately 9% more and improved math proficiency rates by approximately 10% more following grant implementation. ELA proficiency also improved in CCSPP schools, though these gains were not statistically significant. These improvements are particularly noteworthy given that all comparison schools served student populations with nearly identical concentrations of students from low-income households (92%), faced similar pandemic-related challenges, and had access to similar state and district supports outside of the community schools program. While all high-need schools in LAUSD have made progress recovering from pandemic-era achievement lows, by the 2023–24 school year, CCSPP Cohort 1 community schools’ math and ELA scores exceeded their prepandemic achievement levels—an outcome not observed in comparable non-CCSPP schools.

Key Takeaways 

LAUSD intentionally developed the infrastructure to implement their CSI vision across its network and sustain these learning approaches across schools. Key takeaways about how LAUSD structured its supports across schools include the following:

• LAUSD’s CSI provides extensive professional development and funding for teacher collaboration to support meaningful changes to classroom practice. Professional learning opportunities offered three trainings focused on developing welcoming and inclusive schools and classrooms, one of which was attended by more than 500 educators representing 60 community schools. The CSI also offered comprehensive training in PBL from several providers, allowing community school staff to deeply engage in new instructional approaches with robust support.
   
• Engaging teachers and other staff from all the district’s community schools in shared professional learning creates the potential for a coherent set of positive changes at scale in the CSI. LAUSD’s CSI engaged educators from nearly every community school in the district in professional development opportunities. Additionally, LAUSD’s Positive Behavior Interventions and Support/Restorative Practices team provided trainings on de-escalation strategies specifically for out-of-classroom staff, aiming to ensure consistent practices across all areas of community schools to support a welcoming, inclusive environment. As seen in the schools that participated in the case study, professional learning provided by the CSI led to substantive school-level changes in instruction and climate.
   
• The unique placement of the CSI within the LAUSD Division of Instruction enabled alignment with other district instructional priorities, such as Linked Learning and CTE. It also supported coordination across initiatives and departments, which enabled the CSI to achieve coherence around core classroom practices and prioritize these practices as central to LAUSD’s community schools approach.
   
• The CSI created specific district- and site-level roles to offer targeted instructional support and resources aligned to the CSI priorities for PBL. Roles such as the CSI’s secondary specialist and school-based PBL champions have offered targeted instructional support. The CSI secondary specialist plays a key role in coordinating instructional staff across the district to strengthen practice in secondary community schools. At the school level, PBL champions strengthen PBL efforts by advocating for teacher collaboration time, offering training and guidance, and securing resources to support PBL units and activities. School-based data collection suggests that these supports strengthened alignment between the CSI’s classroom and instructional priorities and school-level practice.
   
• The CSI provided clear guidance and resources around classroom practice while recognizing each school’s unique context. For example, CSI guidance established a structure and expectation for implementing PBL while allowing schools to adapt it to their specific needs. The elementary school in this study began with a small PBL cohort before expanding schoolwide, whereas the secondary school, already experienced in PBL, was able to forgo introductory opportunities. Looking ahead, the CSI plans to offer more advanced PBL opportunities for schools with greater experience to provide continued support for meaningful instructional change while honoring school-level strengths and needs.

Community Schools in Los Angeles Unified: Transforming Teaching and Learning by Sarah Klevan, Natalie Spitzer, Laura E. Hernández, Cassandra Rubinstein, and Walker Swain is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This research was supported by the Stuart Foundation. Core operating support for LPI is provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. We are grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders.