The UCLA Center for Community Schooling, in partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), has established a new Consortium of Community Schools aimed to document and elevate exceptional local community school practices.

The district is home to a number of community schools that range in their partnerships, contexts, governance, grade spans, size, demographics, and transformation process. The UCLA Center for Community Schooling, for example, partners and supports the UCLA Community School at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, and the Mann UCLA Community School located in South Los Angeles. An opportunity to learn from these and other community schools can inform both local and national efforts to support this effective strategy to develop stronger communities and improve student outcomes. In particular, as LAUSD implements the Community School Initiative—a process that supports community school transformations—the UCLA Center for Community Schooling hopes to support these efforts by highlighting the ongoing work of existing community schools.

The UCLA Consortium of Community Schools, supported by a grant from the Stuart Foundation, provides an opportunity for participating schools to share community school strategies that have been key to their school’s growth and progress. Teacher Research Fellows at each site are partnering with UCLA researchers to develop research-practice partnerships (RPPs) that focus on community school strategies that strengthen teaching and learning. Guided by the belief that teacher voice and participation is foundational to community school transformation efforts, Teacher Research Fellows identify, study, and share strategies that:

• Enable collaborative leadership and shared decision-making among all stakeholders
• Establish a supportive professional learning environment that assists teachers in improving their practice, strengthens curriculum and instruction, addresses issues of sustainability, enables teachers to take on new roles, and fosters agency
• Support powerful teaching and student learning that provides rich, challenging and sustaining curricula and pedagogy that meets students’ learning needs and is relevant to their lives

CURRENT MEMBERS OF THE UCLA CONSORTIUM OF COMMUNITY SCHOOLS:

• Humanitas Academy of Art and Technology
• Leo Politi Elementary School
• Mann UCLA Community School
• Social Justice Humanitas Academy
• UCLA Community School

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Contact Marisa Saunders (m.saunders@ucla.edu) with inquiries.