Nothing For Us Without Us: 

Community-Led Transformation through Coalition-Building

San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) has long embodied the principles of community schooling—well before California’s landmark $4.1 billion investment in 2021. Rooted in a tradition of neighborhood-based schools, equity-centered practices, and collaborative partnerships, the district has fostered a locally grounded approach to student success. Over time, educators, families, community organizations, and advocates have come together to co-create a model of schooling that reflects the unique needs and values of San Diego’s diverse communities. Drawing from this rich history, the authors—each of whom played a distinct and vital role in advancing community schools in the district—share how local empowerment and responsiveness, structural flexibility and innovation, and intentional district-community co-creation have helped realize the promise of community schools in SDUSD.

About a decade ago, the National Education Association (NEA) identified community schools as a powerful strategy to remodel public schools to achieve the outcomes students, school staff, families, and communities deserve. Recognizing the potential for systemic transformation, NEA convened leading school districts, including SDUSD, to learn from existing community schools and plan for future implementation. This gathering, held in Milwaukee, provided a crucial space for collaboration and strategy development among school leaders, educators, and community advocates.

With initial grassroots organizing, the San Diego Education Association built a broad coalition…this coalition would build an advocacy platform for community schools alongside school board members, students, and families.“

Following this experience, the San Diego Education Association (SDEA), with NEA’s support, became a driving force in expanding community schooling within the district. With initial grassroots organizing, SDEA built a broad coalition amongst organizations such as the Center on Policy Initiatives, California School Employees Association, San Diego State University, Alliance San Diego and Administrators Association San Diego City Schools. Throughout the following years, this coalition would build an advocacy platform for community schools alongside school board members, students, and families. This collaborative approach laid the groundwork for San Diego’s expansion of community schools, ensuring that the strategy was implemented in a way that reflected the district’s unique needs and priorities.

By 2020, SDUSD and SDEA had general consensus that schools needed an improvement strategy that could address the complex issues that schools were facing. By leaning in to the concerns of families, students and educators, SDEA and SDUSD unanimously passed a board resolution in support of community schools. By then, momentum and the infrastructure for shared power and flexibility had been established by the long-term organizing of the community schools coalition. This set the stage to ensure a meaningful implementation of CCSPP schools like Mountain View.

SDUSD started with 5 community schools in the 2022-2023 school year. Each year since then, the district has added ten additional schools, leading to a total of 35 community schools for the 2025-2026 school year. Designation to become a community school is a process overseen by the SDUSD Community School Steering Committee. In addition to seeking to support schools with the highest needs populations, the steering committee encourages collaboration throughout the application process. To start, all schools must have a representative from all educational partners (educators, classified staff, administrators, and families) committed to this transformational work. Then, each school completes an application, which is no easy feat! This multi-page application asks about the hopes and dreams of each school and how those hopes align with and are rooted in the assets, needs, and goals of the school community. Applications are scored by a sub-committee within the steering committee, and the approved applications are submitted to the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) to seek additional support. Amongst other resources, SDUSD schools are supported with an application coach to help guide them through the entire process.

As we reflect on our collective work in San Diego over the past 15 years, we recognize that our strength and hope for sustainability lies in the strong infrastructure and relationships we have built. We highlight three key elements that have been critical to implementing our community schools: local empowerment, structural flexibility and innovation, and sustained collaboration between labor and the district.

SDUSD has built its community schools strategy by grounding the work in the values, voices, and visions of the local community.

• Prioritize Co-Creation Across Interest-holders. Rather than imposing top-down mandates, SDUSD has embraced a collaborative process where students, educators, families, and community partners all play a role in decision-making. This collective approach expands perspectives, builds trust, and ensures that policies and programs are responsive to the needs and assets of the school community. At Mountain View, for example, this aspect of community schooling aligns with our core beliefs about school transformation. We believe, and have experienced first hand, that school transformation does not occur by “doing things to people.” Community schooling is a bottom-up strategy, and that is precisely why it is one of the more effective strategies for transforming a school. It’s not a recipe that everyone has to follow. Simultaneously, we embrace a set of practices (e.g., shared decision-making) that signal a clear commitment to the work.
• Build Responsive Systems and Supports. Community Schools Site Coordinators serve as the essential connector between the school, families, and community partners, striving to establish sustainable systems that will endure beyond the CCSPP grant. This role focuses on identifying and eliminating barriers to student success by coordinating academic, health, and social-emotional resources tailored to the unique needs of the school community. Through strategic collaboration with school leadership, staff, families, and local organizations, the Site Coordinator implements programs that enhance student achievement, promote family engagement, and strengthen community well-being. By fostering strong partnerships, leveraging data-driven decision-making, and building capacity within the school and community, the Site Coordinator ensures equitable access to resources, cultivates a welcoming and inclusive school climate, and empowers students and families to actively contribute to the school’s growth and development. The ultimate goal is to create resilient and sustainable structures and practices that will continue to benefit the community long after the CCSPP.

Rather than imposing top-down mandates, SDUSD has embraced a collaborative process where students, educators, families, and community partners all play a role in decision-making.”

To support deeper implementation of community schools, SDUSD has leveraged pilot designations and other site-level flexibilities that allow for responsive governance, staffing, and instructional design. These structures give schools, like Mountain View, the tools to adapt to local conditions and promote innovation while remaining aligned to district-wide goals for equity and whole-child development.

• SDEA and SDUSD Work Closely to Create and Sustain Robust Staffing. Innovative staffing enables the operationalization of significant collaborative decision-making—especially in classroom integration of culturally-responsive and community-based instruction. An example of this is the Community Schools Site Coach who serves in a hybrid teacher/leader role at each community school. The selection of the Site Coach is jointly determined by the School Governance Team and the School Principal. To support these Coaches, the district provides central office resource teachers who support Site Coaches and CS Coordinators full time. Each central office resource teacher serves five community schools, and these educator-leaders apply their experience across grade spans and instructional models. This alignment in staffing and its direct bridge to central office ensures that both the work of the school and district strategically advance community schooling.  

To support deeper implementation of community schools, SDUSD has leveraged pilot designations and other site-level flexibilities that allow for responsive governance, staffing, and instructional design.”

• Support School-level Flexibilities. As a result of parent organizing in 2020, Mountain View made a case to become the district’s first pilot school. As a district pilot school, Mountain View is supported to operationalize shared decision-making through agreements or formal autonomy between the school and district in order to promote innovation and shared decision-making. While the school is in the process of formalizing flexibility in efforts to withstand potential leadership turnover and to sustain the vision of the school, Mountain View, like all community schools across the state, is best positioned to leverage their impact by engaging in shared decision-making at the site level in order to stay responsive and adaptive to the ever-changing needs of the community. Site-level flexibility can be a powerful lever for aligning educational practice with the priorities and aspirations of local communities—and why similar flexibilities may be critical for scaling the community schools model across SDUSD.

The success of community schools in SDUSD is anchored in strong labor-district collaboration, coherent policy commitments, and systemwide infrastructure. Through collective bargaining, shared vision, and strategic learning from external models, the district is laying the groundwork for sustainable, scalable, and equity-focused community school implementation.

• Build Sustainability into Contract Demands. One of the strategic moves made by SDUSD and the SDEA was to ensure community school sustainability and long-term district commitment by integrating community schooling into collective bargaining agreements. By securing legally binding commitments, community schools became part of SDUSD’s broader vision for educational justice. This approach ensures that funding, staffing, and resources for community schools are protected from shifting political and budgetary priorities.
• Draw from the Knowledge of Existing Models. The importance of learning from existing examples across the state and country played a critical role in shaping San Diego’s approach. The district drew on best practices from NEA’s Community Schools Playbook, the Learning Policy Institute’s research, and collaborations with districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District, which had already pioneered community school governance structures. By adapting these frameworks, SDUSD avoided the need to start from scratch and instead built on proven strategies that allowed school teams, like Mountain View’s, to focus more fully on site-level implementation. For example, once Mountain View received community school designation, the school faculty and staff felt confident that they “could focus on actually doing the work” with the knowledge that resources and supports would be provided.

As we reflect on our collective work in San Diego over the past 15 years, we recognize that our strength and hope for sustainability lies in the strong infrastructure and relationships we have built.”

Today, SDUSD’s commitment to community schooling continues to grow. With substantial funding secured for the expansion of community schools, the district is focused on ensuring high-quality implementation that remains rooted in its original vision to empower families, staff, community organizations, and the students themselves to design and implement services and support together which fit each neighborhood’s needs. However, the work does not end with policy victories. San Diego’s experience underscores the importance of ongoing advocacy, coalition-building, and accountability structures to sustain momentum.

The local coalition that fought for community schools now plays a new role: holding the district accountable and continuously improving implementation. Organizations like NEA and the California Teachers Association provide ongoing support to local community schools organizing, ensuring that community schools remain a transformational force rather than a surface-level reform or program. At the local level, SDEA continues to negotiate for contract provisions that solidify the role of community schools, ensuring that they remain a cornerstone of SDUSD’s educational framework.

The local coalition that fought for community schools now plays a new role: holding the district accountable and continuously improving implementation.”

As SDUSD and other districts continue on this path, the lessons learned in San Diego offer a roadmap for sustaining community schools through system building. By embedding community schooling in district policy, fostering collaborative leadership, and maintaining strong district and labor coalitions, public schools can continue to serve as hubs of opportunity and justice for all students and families.