The Kentucky Community School Initiative (KCSI) seeks to create better outcomes for Kentucky students and to reduce barriers to learning. Beginning in the 2023-2024 school year, 20 districts and 40 schools from across the state will participate in this five-year, transformative initiative to implement full-service community schools.
The Learning Policy Institute defines community schools as an evidence-based strategy to advance equity and reduce barriers to learning by providing the services needed to support student and family well-being. Through trusting relationships and well-coordinated supports, community schools ensure that students receive the health, social service, and learning opportunities they need to be successful. A full-service community school is a place, a set of partnerships and a local engagement strategy that creates and coordinates opportunities with public schools to serve all members of the community and accelerate student success. Community schools serve as a vehicle for hyper-local decision-making that responds to the unique needs of each community.
Each community school is a unique representation of the community’s needs and resources. No two community schools will look exactly alike, as no two communities are identical.
KCSI aims to embed the four pillars of community schools, tailored to the local need and resources.
The four pillars are as follows:
Active family and community engagement
Expanded and enriched learning times
Integrated supports
Collaborative leadership and practices to support high-quality teaching
Embedded within the four pillars are pipeline services for students and families.
Encouraging family and community involvement
Community based support for students
High quality early education programs
High quality education programs both inside and outside the classroom
Helping students smoothly transition between different school levels
Support post-secondary and workforce readiness
Social, health, nutrition and mental health services
Juvenile crime prevention and rehabilitation programs
As part of the KCSI, community schools’ work involves five big shifts.
Full-service community schools are engaged in moving from more
programs to increased local coordination, silos to
collaborative leadership, random acts of programming to intentionality for high-impact, schools working
alone to groundswell
action and doing “for” to
listening and doing “with” families and communities.