The global pandemic has renewed public interest in the community schools approach, a century old reform movement that centers the school in the strengths and needs of local neighborhoods. This movement is often framed as an effort to provide wrap-around services such as health and after-school programs. Community schools also represent a radical rethinking of who has knowledge, how young people learn, and how teachers teach. To support this rethinking, we are launching a new multi-media, open access journal with four features: School Cases, Teacher Scholarship, Youth Research, and Policy ABCs.
At this year’s summit researchers and practitioners from the UCLA Community School (UCLA-CS), UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA Center for Community Schooling will present “Tech Tools for Equity: How Improvement Science Helped a School Community Create a Technology Tool to Address Local Problems Related to COVID-19.” When UCLA-CS closed its physical doors in March 2020, UCLA-CS explored virtual ways for the staff to monitor, communicate, and collaborate around students who were struggling and disengaging with the school community. In response, UCLA-CS, with university partners, created a learning management technology tool called Community Integrated Database Systems.
