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A review of reports on the teacher workforce and state agency documents covering the 2020-21 or 2021-22 school years found that, at a minimum, there were 314,134 teaching positions either left unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for the subject matter they were teaching.
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In a comprehensive list, LPI policy experts outline how community schools can utilize a variety of federal programs with approximately $366 billion in available funding to provide services and advance whole child approaches to education.
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In the aftermath of the pandemic, as many children and youth are struggling with mental health and to reengage in learning, a growing chorus of people are calling for community schools as an approach to reinvent education to better serve students, educators, and families.
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Over the past few years, COVID-19, school shootings, systemic racism, and other crises have upended schools and made one thing epically clear: Returning to business as usual is not an option. This impact report reflects LPI’s efforts to inform practice and policy that can reinvent and redesign schools to enable equitable and empowering learning for each and every child.
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In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten to all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025–26. Melanie Leung-Gagné and Hanna Melnick write about how schools and districts across the state are progressing on the planning and implementation for this ambitious expansion.
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California has invested billions in community schools strategies in the past several years. In addition to leveraging these state funds, blending and braiding local, state, and federal funding sources may help to sustainably finance a community schools strategy in the long term.
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Many students across the country don’t have access to opportunities to learn that prepare them for post-secondary life. Linda Darling-Hammond and Byron Ernest elevate examples from California and Indiana to illustrate how state boards of education can create innovative and equitable education models.
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Across the country, many schools have adopted restorative practices in an effort to improve school climate and student outcomes while reducing exclusionary discipline. Restorative practices improve students’ academic achievement and decreases suspension rates and disparities.
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Infrastructure at Oakland Unified School District helped to successfully implement a community schools approach by centralizing processes and systems and providing support for family engagement and professional learning and development.
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Fremont High School in Oakland, CA, is among the many schools seeing benefits from adopting restorative practices in place of exclusionary discipline policies such as suspensions and expulsions, which disproportionately impact students of color and students with disabilities. Since implementing these policies, Fremont has reduced suspension rates and increased enrollments.
