Community Schools presents an opportunity to rethink partnerships and the role that schools have in meeting the needs of students and families. Strongly aligned to this vision of schools is the English Learner Roadmap (EL Roadmap) policy goals to improve services for English learners (ELs) and ensure an assets-based focus of students and families. Therefore, it is critical for the establishment of an effective Community School for it to be implemented alongside the EL Roadmap, not as an additional program, but as a central component.
Californians Together has provided a document adapted from Section 4: Engaging the Whole Village (pages 44-57) of the California English Learner Roadmap Implementation Guide and Toolkit for Administrators Volume 5: Aligning and Articulating Practices Across the System. It offers guidance for how district and school leaders might plan for and implement the Community Schools model with the EL Roadmap as a central component.
It is our hope that this document can support the development and continued implementation of Community Schools, through alignment with the EL Roadmap. The Community Schools model holds great promise to deliver much needed services to EL students, immigrant and refugee students, and their families. Furthermore, we do not see the EL Roadmap and the Community Schools model as two separate policies, but as two complementary strategies that cannot be fully realized without the other.