Community Schools in Rural California: Leveraging Shared Resources in West Kern County

Rural schools and the distinct obstacles their leaders face in spurring school improvement have received increasing public and policy attention. While rural schools are diverse, studies indicate that many share common challenges, including lower student achievement in comparison to their nonrural counterparts and the presence of achievement gaps as students progress into secondary settings. Other studies highlight that many students and families in rural settings face socioeconomic difficulties, often noting how job insecurity and discrimination shape rural living and student outcomes. Additional research demonstrates that structural factors, including teacher recruitment and retention, limited administrative capacity, and inconsistent access to services, can hinder operations in rural schools and impede student progress.

Enabled by state and federal investments, many leaders in rural districts are turning to community schooling to address the realities their students and families face. Community schools represent an evidence-based school improvement strategy in which educators, community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student learning. To do this, community schools organize in- and out-of-school resources, supports, and opportunities to enable student success and well-being, typically instituting a range of whole child educational approaches that support academic, social, and emotional development. Systems-level supports that enable community school development, continuous improvement, and sustainability play an important role, particularly when seeking to support community schools at scale.

Practitioners, policymakers, and community members are seeking guidance on how to use investments to implement and sustain high-quality community schools. However, studies on the structures and practices that enable quality community school implementation are few. Even fewer focus on the strategy’s enactment in rural settings, despite the distinct challenges and opportunities in rural communities. This case study addresses these research gaps and examines how a cross-district collaborative—the West Kern Consortium for Full-Service Community Schools (West Kern Consortium)—leveraged shared resources to enable student success and well-being through its implementation of the community schools strategy in its rural context.

West Kern Consortium for Full-Service Community Schools

Nestled amid the agricultural and oil-rich fields outside of Bakersfield, CA, are the six rural districts that comprise the West Kern Consortium. Four of the six consortium districts support students in grades K–8 and maintain student populations ranging from 140 to 291 students. The remaining two are high school districts composed of one comprehensive high school and one alternative learning setting and serve between 1,159 and 1,782 students. As a collective, the consortium reaches more than 3,800 students in rural West Kern County.

The West Kern Consortium was formally established in 2018 when three elementary districts established a cross-district community schools initiative after receiving a federal Full-Service Community Schools grant. In 2019, the community schools collective grew to include an additional small elementary district, and by 2022, with the support of a California Community Schools Partnership Program implementation grant, the consortium had expanded to include the high school districts.

The West Kern Consortium maintains a vision for its community schools initiative that is grounded in advancing five priorities: (1) early childhood education, (2) expanded learning, (3) mathematics and literacy education, (4) family and community engagement, and (5) social and mental health services. Data suggest that the consortium’s multifaceted initiative is having an impact, as its districts have supported growth in math and literacy achievement and impressive reductions in chronic absence, among other positive outcome measures.

Findings

West Kern Consortium leaders used investments to institute structures and practices that enabled high-quality community school implementation and student success. These included the following:

• Allocating Resources to Enable Achievement and Instructional Improvement. From its inception, the West Kern Consortium centered math and literacy achievement as key priorities in its community schools initiative. In turn, consortium leaders allocated resources to spur continuous improvement in teaching and learning, illustrating how to prioritize and integrate academic learning as a pillar of community school transformation. Resources were used to invest in instructional coaches who provided virtual or on-site guidance, depending on educator preference, as well as the introduction of a data-driven instructional improvement process that engaged educators in a coherent suite of professional development activities throughout the school year. These instructional supports were not single-dose professional development experiences; rather, they represented ongoing and coherent professional supports that allowed educators to continuously improve their pedagogical practices over time.
   
• Hiring Dedicated Community School Personnel. Consortium leaders invested in community school coordinators (CSCs) and social workers—full-time personnel placed in each district who lent dedicated capacity to initiative priorities. CSCs played a central role in enabling family and community engagement, while social workers’ primary charge was to better connect students and families to social and mental health resources. As CSCs and social workers maintained distinct primary responsibilities, they collaborated to ensure that critical supports were in place for students and families, particularly in the face of acute challenges. The most notable example of their collaboration to tackle challenges can be seen in their coordinated efforts to combat chronic absence—an area in which the consortium has made impressive gains. Overall, hiring community school personnel expanded the often-strained staff capacity in small, rural districts and allowed the districts to advance their goals while addressing emerging challenges.
   
• Creating Capacity-Building Opportunities for Community School Personnel. To enable CSCs and social workers to do their work in powerful ways, West Kern Consortium leaders created a system of professional development opportunities. These included communities of practice, which convened virtually each month and enabled CSCs and social workers to engage in ongoing learning opportunities with their counterparts in other districts. In addition, CSCs and social workers received individual coaching from initiative leaders and engaged in site visits to connect with community school personnel in other districts or regions. In instituting these ongoing professional development opportunities, West Kern Consortium leaders recognized the importance of targeted support for these actors and facilitated learning exchanges that made it possible for CSCs and social workers to collaborate with those in similar roles to share best practices and engage in collaborative problem-solving. Taken collectively, these capacity-building opportunities coalesced to create a coherent professional development system, which is a critical systems-level support for high-quality community school implementation.
   
• Creating a Supportive Infrastructure to Sustain Implementation. West Kern Consortium leaders allocated time and resources to create a supportive, systems-level infrastructure to sustain implementation. This included identifying initiative comanagers—a district administrator of one consortium district and an external consultant—who lent necessary administrative capacity and visionary leadership. Comanagers, in turn, embraced adaptive and collaborative leadership strategies as they managed the initiative, enabling shared governance, continuous improvement, and attentiveness to districts’ distinct needs. Collaborative leadership and continuous improvement were also supported by the initiative’s rural Children’s Cabinet, a cross-sector board that advised comanagers and consortium districts in addressing key challenges and in supporting strategic thinking. As leaders built a cross-district system of community schools, they maintained a keen eye on the initiative’s sustainability, taking care to institute structures and practices that could enable ongoing quality and financial solvency.

Lessons

Findings from the efforts in the West Kern Consortium point to how investments in community schools can be used to build effective and supportive learning environments in varied geographic regions. At the same time, this study provides specific lessons about systemic efforts to enable high-quality community schooling in small, rural settings. These lessons include the following:

• Working Stronger Together. By bringing together small, rural districts, the consortium amassed and leveraged resources that individual districts likely would not have attained by working independently. These previously unavailable resources provided critical capacity and helped to alleviate challenges in connecting students and families with resources—two common issues in rural schools.
   
• Creating Systems for Efficient and Collaborative Management. Shared resources are better accessed when there is an intentional system for initiative management and collaboration. In the West Kern Consortium, this took the form of allocating resources to secure dedicated capacity from the initiative’s comanagers. Comanagers provided much-needed administrative capacity while establishing a system of shared governance that conveyed and embodied a sense of collective responsibility.
   
• Enabling Adaptability. Processes that allow for adaptability in community school implementation acknowledge and address the diverse dynamics and needs in rural communities. Approaches used in the West Kern Consortium embodied this orientation, as consortium leaders provided districts flexibility in using shared resources and implemented capacity-building approaches that supported individualized professional learning. Instituting approaches like these fostered adaptability and responsiveness, thus honoring an inherent principle in community schooling—that community schools be designed and supported in ways that meet the distinct needs in their settings.
   
• Facilitating Connections Between Partners and Districts. Facilitating opportunities for communication and connection among county and nonprofit officials, rural district leaders, and school personnel supports high-quality community school implementation. In the consortium, leaders facilitated these connections through its Children’s Cabinet, enabling external partners and community school personnel to understand what services were needed and to ultimately enable improved service provision. Through engagement like this, leaders can help to bridge resource gaps.
   
• Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement. Structures that engage local actors in continuous improvement build a culture that drives high-quality community school implementation and sustainability in small, rural settings. The West Kern Consortium instituted a range of localized structures that cultivated this culture, including its professional development structures and its rural Children’s Cabinet, which enabled local actors to identify emerging problems and institute effective solutions. Structures like those in the consortium not only help spur improvement, but they also contribute to community school sustainability as they build local capacity.
   
• Responding to the Conditions for Living and Working in Rural Settings. Mitigating challenges associated with living and working in rural communities is an important consideration in rural community school implementation. Consortium leaders understood these obstacles and instituted structures that facilitated access to key resources, services, and supports. These included structures that allowed staff, students, and families to receive supports in ways that eased travel burdens and/or aligned with their preferences. Instituting accommodations like these can ensure that teachers, students, and families receive the supports they need in the ways they need.
   
• Attending to Sustainability in Small, Rural Districts. The financial sustainability of community school initiatives in small, rural districts requires nimbleness and sensitivity to the fiscal realities these districts face. Consortium leaders were consistently mindful of limited state funding and worked with consortium districts to identify and establish sustainable funding strategies. They also strategically instituted structures—like those that support professional development and continuous improvement—that were economical and adaptable to local needs. Leaders of rural community school initiatives in small, rural settings can maintain similar sensibilities as they chart a stable financial path forward.

Community Schools in Rural California: Leveraging Shared Resources in West Kern County by Laura E. Hernández and Emily Germain 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.

Cover photo provided by Lost Hills Union School.