Another Opportunity for Collaboration – California Community Schools Partnership Program & HEART Collaboration at Longwood Elementary School

Recent events, such as COVID-19, have encouraged the state, districts, and schools to rethink the direct connection between schools and families. In January 2021 California furthered legislation and passed the California Community  Schools Partnership Act to strengthen the link between school and community services. A community school is a “whole-child” school improvement strategy where the district and school work closely with teachers, students, families, and partners to bring an integrated focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development, and community engagement. Community school strategies can be an effective approach to mitigate the academic and social impacts of current events, improve school responsiveness to student and family needs, and to organize school and community resources to address barriers to learning. 

Community schools align deeply with Seneca’s values and the UE programs at Seneca are working with many community schools partnerships around the state. In Hayward with the HEART Program (Hayward Empowering Advocacy and Radical Transformation), Behavior Intervention Specialist Mickey Gant, has joined the community schools partnership team at Longwood Elementary School. The team has representatives from the Longwood community, a student, school staff, 2 local agencies (including Mickey at Seneca), and the district. The goal is to engage in collaborative practices to best support the Longwood students and families. Mickey shares: 

“Being apart of the community schools team at Longwood is an opportunity that I feel very fortunate to have and working on this team with members who are so passionate about serving youth has been so fulfilling. There are so many variables to consider when thinking about how a student learns or how they will be most successful while in school, and the work that this team will do will highlight those variables and show how important it is that we as a community shape our future leaders.” Mickey continues, “The team is currently working on looking deeper into our Capacity-building strategies at our site. We’ve developed a rubric to help with self-assessing where our school currently lands on our growth stages and the work that is necessary to get to the growth stage of a transformational Community Schools Team.”  ​

Nice work Mickey! We look forward to seeing all the community schools partnership team at Longwood achieves!  ​

Blog Post Written By: Bunny Rutherford, Assistant Director of School Partnerships