Abstract
Little research has focused on the extent to which community school principals approach family engagement efforts, specifically from an equity-centered perspective. This study examined how community school principals’ leadership practices exhibited tenets of Community Equity Literacy. Results from interviews with 13 administrators and 19 coordinators from three states highlighted the importance of equity, but participants’ conceptions were often embedded in school-centric paradigms that exhibited surface-level understandings of family and community strengths. Dispositions and skills principals need to forge relationships with families that extend beyond service provisions to create equitable community-centric partnerships inclusive of a broad group of constituents are discussed.
Keywords
Introduction
The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA) Act, known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 marked the “single greatest expansion of the federal role in education policy since the original 1965 act” (Davidson et al., 2015, p. 347). Policymakers framed it as an effective approach to reducing achievement gaps, holding districts and schools accountable for student learning, and increasing students’ math and reading proficiency (Singh & Al-Fadhli, 2011). By many accounts, NCLB perpetuated a centralized and standardized lens by which urban school improvement efforts were situated (Schoen & Fusarelli, 2008), placing increased emphasis on school choice and privatization, high-stakes testing, and a narrowing of curriculum (Milner, 2014). As such, the accomplishments of predominately White students attending well-resourced schools in more affluent neighborhoods were highlighted while those who were marginalized by race, disability, ethnicity, and poverty were deemed low-performing or failing (Pazey, 2020). During this time, parents and caregivers were excluded from conversations related to school improvement and reform processes (Pazey, 2020) and local communities were largely ignored in the law altogether (Public Education Network, 2007).
Implementation of NCLB was described as “a heavy-handed policy instrument,” and there were concerns the law “…had not proceeded as the principal [federal government] intended. The time had come to revise the contract with the states” (Duff & Wohlstetter, 2019, p. 297). Resultantly, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) with bipartisan support from Congress. ESSA was designed to shift authority over education back to the states. Under ESSA, states were granted flexibility to choose from a suite of assessments to measure student growth and permitted to develop their own proficiency goals in lieu of NCLB-era Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) (Duff & Wohlstetter, 2019). ESSA guidelines also returned choice over school reform back to state and local officials, provided they met evidence-based criteria and included perspectives from within and outside the internal school community (Provinzano et al., 2020). Unlike NCLB, which prioritized parent involvement, ESSA required more than mere presence in the school. All school districts receiving Title I funds were required to devise a written parent and family engagement policy that identified “expectations and objectives for meaningful parent and family involvement” (Henderson, n.d., p.5), and were to carry out activities to support such engagement.
Additional school-based requirements for family and community engagement (FCE) were welcomed by advocates of cross-sector collaborative reform efforts and considered a win for the Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) movement (Community Schools Playbook, n.d.). FSCS are described as place-based strategies that aim to reduce educational inequality by fostering partnerships between the school and local community resources (Sanders, 2018). FSCS strategies make explicit that “in order to significantly improve the academic and developmental outcomes of children, schools, and community partners must work together to ensure that all students have an equitable opportunity to succeed in school” (Coalition for Community Schools, 2017, p. 2), and thus they are largely reliant on meaningful FCE. Sufficient evidence exists to qualify FSCS as federally funded interventions for school improvement under ESSA (Oakes et al., 2017), and states were permitted to design their ESSA plans to include FSCS as an intervention for improving student and school outcomes (Oakes et al., 2017). To date, over a dozen states have done so (Community Schools Playbook, n.d.).
Effective FSCS initiatives align with ESSA family engagement requirements, as meaningful FCE is tantamount to deepening the trust, relationships, and partnerships between school and home (Oakes et al., 2017). In-school reform practices that negate such communal voice ignore “the myriad of ways that out-of-school, neighborhood-based factors like housing, healthcare, safety, and nutrition influence the inequities that manifest inside of schools” (Green et al., 2019, p. 417). Therefore, leadership of the school principal and having a full-time community school coordinator are also necessary components for successful FSCS implementation (Mayger & Provinzano, 2020; Min et al., 2017). Sanders et al., 2019, found community school coordinators develop and maintain “linkages between multiple school, family, and community stakeholders,” while also serving as cultural brokers “building bridges between families and schools” (p. 94). Similarly, research on principal leadership in FSCS established that relational, boundary-spanning leadership styles facilitate shared responsibility (Krumm & Curry, 2016), promote communication, and support collaborative school environments (Sanders, 2018).
FSCS leaders seek to strengthen engagement connections within and outside the school and do so by supporting caregivers as active partners in their children's learning. The extent to which this equity-driven engagement approach is occurring, however remains unknown. Few studies have focused on equity-centered leadership practices for FCE in FSCS (Green & Gooden, 2014), yet these spaces are intended to thrive when school leaders and other key personnel are contextually responsive and authentically partner with neighborhood stakeholders and local community-based organizations (CBOs). In her examination of three cross-sector, organizational efforts designed to improve family engagement in education, Ishimaru (2019) explained “few empirical studies have examined the implications of this context [cross sector collaboratives] for efforts to build more equitable partnerships between nondominant families, schools, and communities” (p. 351). Recent articles by Shiller (2020) and Goessling et al. (2020) indicated that, despite early efforts to be community driven and transformational, FSCS initiatives in Baltimore and Philadelphia remain primarily focused on service provisions. This is problematic because the nature of FSCS require school personnel, especially school leaders, to “enact their professional roles differently to build on students’ cultural, family, and community assets” (Galindo & Sanders, 2019, p. 523).
This qualitative study sought to fill these literature gaps by identifying specific factors principals and community school coordinators (hereafter “coordinators”) deemed necessary for effective leadership in a FSCS and demonstrating if and how those responses aligned with Green’s (2018a) Community Equity Literacy (CEL) framework. The primary question the authors were interested in answering was: How do full-service community school principals’ leadership practices exhibit tenets of CEL? The framework for CEL was selected because FSCS are touted as a reform approach that can reverse negative outcomes for underserved students in high-needs communities, yet “research suggests that many current and aspiring school leaders are neither prepared to establish equitable and authentic partnerships with families and communities of color nor counter the neighborhood-based inequities that shape students’ in-school experiences” (Green & Rodgers, 2017, p. 36). A deeper dive into FSCS principals’ leadership practices is a necessary step in confronting the increasing levels of inequity in urban-school communities (Green, 2017b).
Literature Review
Leveraging Equity through Policy: ESSA and the Full-Service Community School (FSCS)
Market-driven education reform agendas under NCLB required school districts to include parents and families in local school improvement planning discussions, but mandates were not enforced (Rogers, 2006), thus there was little if any incentive for school leaders to authentically do so (Starr, 2019). Focused intently on AYP, school leaders often omitted families and neighborhood stakeholders in broader conversations or decision-making processes around teaching and learning initiatives. Exclusion was not always deliberate, rather it was the consequence of how those implementing policy (e.g., district and school leaders) positioned their roles (i.e., compliance managers, information providers) and subsequently the roles of family and community (i.e., volunteers, information receivers) during these times. Communication was a one-way street and if some parents or caregivers were attending back-to-school nights, fundraisers, and other non-academic events, engagement quotas were met. These conventional approaches “de-center[ed] equity” (Green, 2017b, p. 371), failed to address systemic issues that privileged some students, families, and communities over others, and “reinforced power inequities between families and schools and consolidated dominant institutional authority” (Ishimaru, 2019, p. 353).
Recently, more promising avenues for school, community and caregiver engagement have emerged in part, because of ESSA. Language of the law evolved from involvement to engagement, and school buildings receiving Title I funds were required to engage in outreach with all families to establish objectives for authentic parent and family engagement with the school (Henderson, 2016). School leaders were provided with guidelines that included examples of how to involve parents in school-based activities and ways they were able to utilize Title I funding strands to support those endeavors. ESSA also espoused specific language demonstrating the criticality of “two-way, meaningful communication between family members and school staff, and to the extent practicable, in a language that family members can understand” (Henderson, 2016, p. 5).
Inclusive family engagement language embedded in ESSA reflected principles of other place-based, collaborative reform efforts broadly enacted across urban spaces during the Obama Administration (e.g., the federal Promise Neighborhood Initiative, which was eventually incorporated into ESSA). Designed around deliberate partnerships between schools, CBOs, local governments, and business sectors, these efforts intended to improve educational outcomes for students living in underserved and marginalized communities and “remedy a lack of coordination, common goals, and shared metrics in previous, disparate efforts to improve educational outcomes” (Ishimaru, 2019, p. 351). Empowered by ESSA, these cross-sector partnerships focused on co-occurring academic, non-academic, social, and community-based realities for students and families in urban communities (Green, 2018b), and FSCS serve as a primary example of such efforts.
The origins of FSCS can be traced back to the early 20th Century when John Dewey and Jane Addams sought greater connection between schools and communities (Dryfoos, 2002). The current FSCS movement began in the 1980's and developed through the efforts of organizations like the University of Pennsylvania, Children's Aid Society, United Way and Coalition for Community Schools. Since their inception, FSCS have implicitly focused on equity, but community school proponents have increasingly joined forces with civil rights groups in coalitions such as the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy to explicitly promote FSCS as a strategy for challenging injustices and building collective power (Daniel et al., 2020; Frankl, 2016; Quinn & Blank, 2020). These efforts suggest that some of the nation's 8,000 to 10,000 FSCS (Quinn & Blank, 2020) are beginning to address early appeals to move beyond individualized service provision (Keith, 1999).
At the core of the FSCS strategy is the belief that the inextricable connection between school and community (Warren, 2005) must be mindfully developed and nurtured through equity-centered partnerships that systematically address inequitable conditions rampant in underserved urban schools and communities. Exemplar FSCS are place-based initiatives that extend the reform lens to school and neighborhood contexts by way of interagency collaboration and authentic relationships amongst stakeholders (Fehrer & Leos-Urbel, 2016). The school is intentionally designed to be contextually responsive to localized needs and provide students, families, and community members with access to opportunities and services that will positively influence community and neighborhood wellbeing (Dryfoos & Maquire, 2002; Green, 2017b).
Though no two FSCS look the same, Maier et al. (2017) identified four pillars common across these types of schools, (1) integrated student supports, (2) expanded learning time and opportunities, (3) FCE, and (4) collaborative leadership and practices. Partnerships and services are often coordinated by a coordinator, and preliminarily results indicate FSCS are effective in reducing risky behavior, lowering the dropout rate, and increasing the academic performance of students (Heers et al., 2016). In terms of equity-centered reform strategies, Galindo and Sanders (2019) emphasized FSCS “have taken on new appeal as we again recognize that holistic approaches to learning are needed to realize the presently elusive goal of educational equity for all students” (p. 523).
Equity, Engagement, and the FSCS Principal
By principle and design, FSCS require the delivery of coordinated, holistic, and integrated services aligned with the needs of students and families. Principals cannot be predisposed to work in isolation (Mayger & Provinzano, 2020), rather they must have the capacity to enact what Sanders et al. (2019) described as “cross-boundary and relational leadership” (p. 89). The former refers to those leaders who can develop trusting and lasting partnerships across various entities, and the latter is situated as a process by which individuals accomplish mutually agreed upon and beneficial organizational goals and objectives. Both necessitate leaders who are reflective, support open dialog, and instill organizational procedures that are open to and respectful of diverse perspectives from in- and out-of-school stakeholders (Sanders et al., 2019).
In successful community schools, principals are committed to “sharing leadership with community partners and building opportunities for FCE in the school” (Blank et al., 2006, p. 9). This deviates from traditional approaches in that it is nested in ideals of democratic leadership, where principals are duly focused on leading school-based efforts while simultaneously facilitating the inclusion of external supports within the school (Ruffin & Brooks, 2010). This style of collaborative leadership shifts authority from one central voice to that of various stakeholder groups who bring unique perspectives and contribute to shared decision-making, thereby facilitating trusting and inclusive partnerships between the school and broader community (Daniel, 2017). FSCS require leaders who recognize whole-system reform is only possible through “networks of responsibility” (Blank et al., 2006, p. 1), where leadership is distributed across internal and external boundaries and “the social capital on which these schools depend and seek to generate is only possible through expanded relationships (Sanders, 2018, p.4).
The power of relationship building in the FSCS context cannot be understated and principals play a critical role in facilitating these boundary-spanning collaborations (Mayger & Hochbein, 2020; Valli et al., 2014). FSCS principals are expected to “build relationships, forge partnerships, craft shared goals, and exercise democracy in decision-making” (Fitzgerald & Quiñones, 2018, p.2). These efforts are designed to engage stakeholders who in many ways are excluded from formal educational systems. Green (2017b) noted, however that school principals working from this collaborative frame can exacerbate systems of oppression and hierarchy if they do not extend responsibilities to stakeholders outside the nexus of formal positional power, including parents/caregivers and neighborhood residents. When interrogating these relationships, Shiller (2020) determined parents and caregivers associated with Baltimore FSCS initiatives were more often treated as clients than partners. Ishimaru (2019) also cautioned that well-intentioned, collaborative parent involvement initiatives, primarily found in diverse, low-income communities, often reinforced dynamics that treat parents as “clients or beneficiaries whose best interests were known by professionals outside of those communities” (Ishimaru, 2019, p. 353). Therefore, school leaders working from a collaborative framework like a FSCS must give more than “the illusion of inclusion” (Green, 2017b, p. 376) if families and community members are to serve as drivers of educational equity (Ishimaru, 2019).
Conceptual Framework
As an equity-centered improvement strategy, FSCS rely heavily on partnerships between the local school, community agencies, faith-based institutions, and local government (Maier et al., 2017). Galindo and Sanders (2019) stated the actions of these partners are intended to (1) provide coordinated services to students and families that are responsive to localized needs (e.g., academic, health, and social services), (2) strengthen family communication and engagement by supporting and empowering caregivers as active partners within the school, and (3) reinforce overall community well-being by “facilitating low-income and racially/ethnically diverse residents’ access to political leaders, media representatives, activists, grant-makers, and others with critical resources” (p. 514). Working in tandem, these mechanisms are designed to move the needle on the long-term goal of creating educational equity for all students. Therefore, understanding if and how this equity-centered mindset is playing out in FSCS principals’ actions is critical. It is for these reasons the authors chose to situate this research in Green’s (2018a) conceptual framework of CEL.
CEL is operationally defined as “an awareness/ consciousness (i.e., knowledge) and skill set (i.e., actions) to improve equity in schools and communities” (Green, 2018a, p. 490) through leadership that effectively and equitably cuts across school and community contexts. Drawing from education, community sociology, and educational leadership literature, Green (2018a) proposed areas of knowledge essential for educational leaders that manifest as five constructs: (a) advocating for school and community equity, (b) leveraging community assets, (c) navigating community power structures, (d) developing asset-based perspectives, and (e) understanding community history. Each are consistent with the national Professional Standards for Educational Leaders, specifically Standard 8 which is clustered within the Meaningful Engagement of Families and Community domain (Mayger & Provinzano, 2020).
The theory of action undergirding CEL is “that effective school leaders and their teams require specific equity-based knowledge and skills to take actions that reduce opportunity gaps inside and outside of school” (Green, 2018a, p. 490). Principals operating from this critical perspective reconceptualize school improvement initiatives as broader community-based efforts that account for neighborhood contexts. In doing so, they also recognize the need to facilitate coalition building amongst school, community, and neighborhood leaders who collectively share the goal of creating authentic and equitable partnerships between the local school and community (Green et al., 2019). CEL accounts for “what school leaders (and their teams) know and do in the context of equitable school-family-community engagement” (Green & Rodgers, 2019, p. 38), and therefore takes a critical perspective that in many ways overlaps with notions of Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework.
Yosso (2005) “broadened the scope of what is considered cultural capital” (Samuelson & Litzler, 2016, p. 95) and brought critical awareness to the multitude of capital (aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, resistant) Communities of Color leverage as they navigate traditional power asymmetries found in school environments (Ishimaru, 2019). These appreciative forms of capital focus on “the array of cultural knowledges, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged” (Yosso, 2005, p. 69) by dominant groups and institutions, like schools. Green (2018a) extended this critical perspective by applying similar values, beliefs, and behaviors to CEL for educational leaders as “there is a paucity of frameworks to guide educational leaders, and their teams, in thinking and acting equitably to improve school and community conditions in solidarity with local stakeholders” (Green, 2018a, p. 488).
Through CEL, Green (2017b) advanced a critical, socially-just leadership framework by which school leaders “view school-community interactions as an equity-centered partnership against injustice rather than just involvement, relations, or engagement” (p. 378). The constructs are designed to “perpetually inform leaders’ actions to improve school and community conditions” (Green, 2018a, p. 491), which FSCS proport to do. Using this framework, the authors sought to determine the extent that FSCS school principals and their teams worked to improve the quality of life in the school community and neighborhood by (a) understanding and addressing inequality, (b) collaboratively identifying and using community resources, (c) becoming familiar with decision makers and organizations in the surrounding area, (d) focusing on family and community strengths, and (c) making themselves aware of changes in the school and community (Green et al., 2019). Given the emphasis on collaborative leadership, it stands to reason that FSCS principals’ actions should run in congruence with, not against, the doctrine of an authentic, community-minded engagement framework like CEL.
Methods
This article draws from data that were collected from a larger two-phase study, which convened a panel of experts on FSCS to deliberate on the topic of community school leadership and interviewed FSCS practitioners (principals and coordinators) to capture their perspectives on the requisite attitudes, characteristics, and behaviors necessary for effective FSCS leadership (see Mayger & Provinzano, 2020). In the current analysis, a qualitative, collective case study design (Creswell & Poth, 2018) was carried out to support the in-depth exploration of principals’ practices in leading a FSCS. A case study can be defined as a research design that looks at the impact of a particular phenomenon as embedded within its real-life context, using multiple sources of evidence (Yin, 1989). This approach was ideal, as the primary goal was to understand how stakeholders were leading community school programing within their individual contexts.
Employing qualitative methods allowed the researchers to interact with participants and gain first-hand knowledge about the context in which each community school functions. Results from the initial study centered around practitioners’ ranking of statements about principal leadership in community schools and how they broadly reflected conceptions of CEL and professional standards for educational leaders. During the initial analysis, a need emerged to dive more deeply into the data to better understand how participants’ stated actions and beliefs about principal leadership aligned, or not, with the five specific constructs of CEL. For the current article, data from each interview and focus group (FG) were analyzed with that particular emphasis in mind.
Sample
Creswell and Poth (2018) indicated that in a collective case study approach, “the inquirer purposefully selects multiple cases to show different perspectives on the issue” (p. 99). Each case was embedded within a bounded system (Stake, 2005), as the researchers purposefully selected participants from FSCS based on two criteria: (a) they had a site-based coordinator, and (b) they were fully implementing the four pillars of FSCS outlined by Maier et al. (2017): integrated student supports, extended learning opportunities, FCE, collaborative leadership. The authors confirmed that sites adhered to the FSCS strategy through authors’ direct involvement with the schools over time, confirmation from the school's coordinating community-based organization, or a description of the school and its programing in published literature. To represent the diversity of the FSCS landscape, researchers included participants from urban schools across all levels (elementary, middle, high schools), schools using district-directed structures, lead-partner structures, university-assisted models, a charter school, schools participating in a regional coalition, and a school that was the sole FSCS in its district.
The sample included the 32 principals and coordinators outlined in Table 1. The participants worked in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey schools that served 65% to 99% Students of Color and 72% to 96% students receiving government-subsidized lunches. Two schools were majority Black/African American and the remaining schools were primarily Hispanic/Latinx. Thirteen participants were principals who had been in their current positions from 1 to 29 years, with a median of 5 years. Nineteen participants were community school coordinators or directors who had been in their positions from 1 to 12 years, with a median of 2 years. Participants with the same identifier number worked in the same schools. One principal (P7) was searching for a new coordinator at the time of the study, thus no coordinator participated from school 7. Eight coordinators who in participated focus groups (C13 to C20) had non-participating principals because the principals (schools 13 to 16) or their district administrators (schools 17 to 20) did not respond to our requests for participation. The final sample was 69% female, 56% White, 31% Hispanic/Latinx, and 13% Black/African American. The principal sample was more balanced in terms of gender and the coordinator sample was more balanced in terms of race and ethnicity.
Demographic Characteristics of Participants and Schools.
Note. Principals and coordinators with the same number work at the same school. FG = focus group. Years = years in current position.
Data Analysis
Two researchers conducted in-person, semi-structured interviews with the 13-community school-based leaders (12 principals and 1 assistant principal) and three coordinators. Each interview lasted between 45–60 min. The remaining 16 coordinators participated in three different focus groups that were approximately 60 min each. Interview questions centered on the beliefs and practices school principals needed to be successful in leading FSCS.
Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step guide to thematic analysis was employed to analyze the dataset. Audio recordings from each interview and FG were immediately transcribed and initially coded separately by each researcher. Reliability by way of investigator triangulation (Denzin, 1970) was an important aspect of analyses procedures. In steps 1 and 2, the researchers familiarized themselves with the transcripts from the interviews and focus groups, deductively applying initial codes across the data set that were directed by the existing five constructs of CEL, as defined by Green (2018a): (a) develop asset-based perspectives, (b) understand community history, (c) navigate community power structure, (d) leverage community assets, and (e) advocate for school and community equity. Codes also emerged inductively from the data, based on participants’ responses to questions regarding equity and leadership in FSCS, and from literature on equitable parent and family engagement in FSCS.
The researchers met regularly to compare results, reconcile emergent codes, and reach consensus on interpretative differences (Saldaña, 2016). The second level of analysis resulted in the identification of initial themes (working toward equity, limited understanding and awareness, and navigating school contexts), which were collectively applied to the dataset (Step 3). From there, themes were again reviewed and further defined to include subthemes under working toward equity, advocating for school and community and networking and leveraging community assets. The latter was further categorized as principal-community-relations approaches that were client-oriented, transactional, or relational (Step 5). In the results that follow (Step 6), the authors draw upon participants’ words to delineate whether and how their expressions and enactment of leadership is reflective of CEL constructs. Results are organized around the major themes and followed by a discussion of how these themes connect to CEL.
Limitations and Researcher Positionality
Our former experiences as school administrators and current roles as professors of educational leadership informed our interest in understanding how FSCS principals’ actions aligned with tenets of CEL. We share a commitment to research that considers issues of social justice for communities of comparative disadvantage and has practical applications for school leaders, policymakers, and leadership preparation programs. This commitment is evident in our selected participants, the types of questions we asked, and in our analytical framing, which offered a critical lens on school leadership and took an affirmative stance toward underserved and oppressed communities. Our research is limited by the makeup of the sample and reliance on interviews. The data we collected were self-reported and were subject to social desirability and retrospective biases. Although we enhanced trustworthiness through careful documentation of our analytic processes and by including a variety of perspectives and experiences, the participants were formal leaders from three mid-Atlantic states in schools serving predominately Latinx students and thus may not represent the full range of viewpoints regarding leadership in varying FSCS contexts. Nevertheless, the experiences of our participants may resonate with those of other FSCS leaders. We believe the themes revealed in the following accounts provide valuable insights into collaborative leadership for equity-centered partnerships.
Results
Conversations with principals and coordinators were analyzed through the lens of CEL, and it was found that principals often leveraged community assets to provide students and families with opportunities and resources. At the same time, many principals appeared to be acting with limited understanding of community resources and local sociopolitical contexts. Instead of principals learning to work in partnership with stakeholders to address inequitable systems within communities, participants described community members as needing to better understand and navigate school contexts. The following sections outline these themes in greater detail.
Working toward Equity
Advocating for school and community
The community school strategy explicitly incorporates integrated services to address students’ and families’ comprehensive needs. Working toward equitable opportunities for students and families was, therefore, an area of strength across principals. The wide array of programs and services offered at each school indicated that principals and coordinators worked diligently to narrow opportunity gaps. One principal described his school's approach as including, “Comprehensive wraparound services for students and for the school. So, everything from medical and dental assistance, to social workers, to tutors, to assisting with attendance, to college counselors, to academic advisement, to what we call extended learning opportunities” [P10]. This FSCS offerings reflected how most participating principals sought to holistically address students’ basic needs and provide them with enriched learning experiences. Another principal outlined her school's collaborative process of extending support to families: Our community school coordinator attends all of our meetings, gathers information and data about what students need, about what families need. Then, they look within their organization and within the community to see if they can provide some resources to meet the needs of our students and families. [P3]
Meeting families’ needs often included referrals to community agencies and organizations for services or aid—either housed in the community or within the school. As seen in this quotation, and supported by other interview responses, coordinators typically shouldered the responsibility for connecting families with community resources.
Only a few of the 13 principals discussed working toward equity within the greater community. Sometimes, the authors found it difficult to determine how principals conceptualized the term “community” because participants often used the word narrowly to describe school constituents, rather than a wider group of people who resided in the local area. One principal mentioned the importance of understanding “the community,” but then clarified, “your community includes your teachers, your students” [P7]. By contrast, a principal who expressed a broader vision of community explained, “You really have to believe that [the school] belongs to everybody, and that we’re doing this for the kids and the families and the larger community” [P8]. Yet, this principal's talk of community equity was limited to general statements of stewardship and servant leadership. Few principals offered specific examples of how they worked toward equity in the broader community, even though three schools hosted community health clinics and two offered community food pantries.
Networking and leveraging community assets
Participating principals were focused on providing services, programs, and resources for students and families, but Green (2017b) conceived of community assets as also including the skills, cultural knowledge, abilities, and social contacts of people from marginalized groups. Because participating principals looked to the community for services and financial support, they appeared to engage more often with professionals from organizations beyond the school's neighborhood than with informal and formal neighborhood leaders. The authors sought to understand principals’ varying approaches to family and community relations and categorized them as client-oriented, transactional, and relational.
Client-oriented
Unsurprisingly, principals most often interacted with local community members whose children attended the school. Many principals, however, positioned children's family members as clients instead of partners. These principals concerned themselves with helping parents and students in meaningful ways, but the client orientation portrayed school adults as actors with agency and families as receivers of services who were acted upon. The following exemplifies principals’ client-oriented approach toward families and community: We’ll provide food when we know there are families in need of assistance…. We brought in the students and their parents early before school, 45 min before school, had doughnuts, coffee, juice, water, and then we provided a seminar on topics that parents had identified that they’d like more information on: cyber-bullying, teaching your child how to read at home, accessing the school district learning apps on my own, our new reading series how parents could access that online. [P8]
This principal characterized engagement with parents as meeting basic needs, hosting them, and educating them. Although parents signaled their preferences for content through Title 1 surveys, it is unclear how much input parents had on the range of topics or format of the seminars.
Transactional
Principals often viewed their interactions with CBOs and businesses as transactions to obtain services, programs, and money from community partners. A principal explained the prevalence of this viewpoint among his colleagues: “A lot of my friends who are principals would love to have services that we can provide, a bunch of the additionals, and they ask me all the time, ‘How do you do that? How can I get them? Can you introduce me to them?’” [P11]. The transactional mindset cast community members into the roles of financial supporters and service providers. This conception of community influenced whom principals approached and how they approached them. One principal, for example, solicited local businesses in this manner: I just go talk to the guy. ‘Listen, I’m trying to do this. Can you sponsor it?’ And I give him a proposal, ‘This is what I’m trying to do. This is the result that I get and you have the money.’ And they give it to me. [P2]
The principal described an appeal for financial sponsorship like a business proposal that involved a written request, evidence of results, and a formal ask. Another principal used a more emotional strategy: I find that that the storyteller part, I find that's important when I’m talking …. to potential funders. I have learned how to tell a story to make people want to cry and I find that they want to hear your story. So, I think you have to be really good at telling your story to people so that they get and they feel what you’re trying to put out there. And I find that that's very successful in getting our vision across, our mission across, but also getting some money for the school, for the program. [P4]
Although these, and other, principals used differing approaches to solicit community members, their descriptions of community interactions focused on how to convince people in businesses and organizations with resources to direct them toward the school.
The principals who took this approach often succeeded in obtaining support, but the transactional approach to community had its limits, as the previous principal's coordinator explained in detail: Every principal will identify a need that some organization in the community can provide…. But are you ready to have these strangers in this building providing a service or living in the building with you to provide a service and meeting the needs of the students and families? I think where sometimes principals can get tripped up is feeling like, ‘But the agency has limitless resources,’ and say, ‘I need you to do this. I need you to do this. I need you to do this.’ Many times, the agencies are willing to do that, but if it becomes, ‘We only have a relationship based on what you need me for,’ then that doesn't really work either. [C4]
The coordinator described how principals who take a transactional approach to community partnerships may focus on the benefits to the school while overlooking partners’ needs and concerns. Community members may resist or come to resent partnerships that lack reciprocity.
Relational
Leaders with a relational orientation toward community members sought reciprocal connection with them. An elementary school principal exemplified the relational approach: If you want to be in a community school, you have to be out in the community. So, sometimes I walk kids home after school, just because I walk through the neighborhood …. People love to help in a school, especially a school that has high needs. They want to be a part of it. But we invite them back for everything, just so they feel like they’re a part of the community. We want them to not just give us things, we want them to actually be a part of the school. [P6]
This principal expressed a desire to be visible in the neighborhood and positioned family and community members as both contributing to the school and benefitting from having an ongoing relationship with its constituent members.
The relational orientation to community interaction was more prevalent among coordinators than principals, perhaps because coordinators’ roles were more often structured to involve frequent interaction with family and community members. A coordinator discussed how his community connections benefitted the school: Growing, up I went to public schools throughout my whole life. I went to a local school here. I live in the community, so I do a lot of taking that information back to [my principal] so that we can figure out what's best for not just our teachers, our instruction but also with the community and what the community really is saying. [C8]
Longstanding relationships with residents and organizations enabled this coordinator to act as a cultural broker who facilitated his colleagues’ understandings of community perspectives. This coordinator's deep local ties were atypical and nonrepresentative of most participating principals and coordinators, who seemed to have grown up and currently reside in neighborhoods and communities other than where their schools are located.
Limited Understanding and Awareness
Principals with CEL appreciate the strengths and gifts available within the community and they eschew deficit perspectives as they recognize how structural inequities and discriminatory practices shape people's behavior (Green, 2017b). Findings from this research demonstrate principals were more aware of the community's structural challenges than its assets. Participating principals’ propensity to seek financial support and services from professionals and organizations outside their schools’ neighborhood boundaries suggested that they held narrow views of community assets. Only three principals characterized families as having strengths, and none positioned local community members unconnected with organizations as having something to offer the school.
Comments from 10 of the 13 principals demonstrated awareness of inequitable community structures or discriminatory practices that affected families. Principals noticed the damaging effects of poverty on children's development and how their local communities lacked safe housing, stores with affordable goods, health care, and other social services. At times, descriptions of structural or community inequities strayed into, or close to, deficit characterizations. Consider the example of one principal's desire to hire someone to help parents who were recent immigrants: We’re pushing towards bringing in part time, twice a week or so many hours a week, a model where somebody can be present to work with my non-English speaking families all around conferences with teachers, social services, and how not to get ripped off by the community. Because a lot of them get ripped off. Then I need to help. [P4]
This principal recognized the vulnerability of people with communication challenges and wanted to help them navigate the school and the community. Yet, the principal primarily characterized family members by what they were unable to do and defaulted to having professionals solve their problems. The principal seemed unaware of how other families from the community might be positioned to assist their peers (e.g., Fernández and Paredes Scribner, 2018).
The only principal to discuss community history approached it from the perspective of the school: This neighborhood was for 20 years, forever, for a long time, was old, like industrial, graffiti. [My predecessor], used to have to take, as the principal, she used to take the mail home with her because there were no mailboxes. Because they would steal them for scrap metal, so she’d have to take all of school mailings home. It is a very different type of neighborhood now. [P10]
The principal recognized the community's evolution from industrial to primarily residential and the reduction of petty crimes such as graffiti and property theft. Yet, he interpreted the impact of these changes in terms of how they affected the school, rather than how they impacted families and community members.
While almost all the principals saw how systemic community problems influenced the school and its constituents, one principal recognized how schools may perpetuate inequities in their communities. This principal expressed frustration with colleagues at a district data team meeting centered on social justice: [The middle school principals, superintendent, and I] were going through data, and talking about equity, and then the one principal raises her hand and says, ‘Neighborhood schools is the most equitable thing in our district.’ …. And I was like, ‘Really? You think that is so equitable? How come you have 35% free and reduced lunch, and I have 90. Is that equity, or is that concentrating racism? You’re putting all the minority kids and poverty on one side in one school, and you don't have it in yours. Is that really equitable?’ I said, ‘Neighborhood schools, the way we have them set up here, is a form of segregation.’ [P9]
While most principals centered their advocacy on getting services and supports for students and families, this principal advocated internally to challenge the way the district drew attendance boundaries to concentrate Students of Color and those facing disadvantage into a limited number of schools. It is notable that the superintendent in this district created a space for school leaders to discuss their own roles in perpetuating social justice.
Some principals expressed awareness that their understanding of and approach to the community had room for improvement. One principal, speaking to the importance of school leaders collaborating and relinquishing control, remarked on the importance of, “Understanding where the kids live and understanding the needs. We’re still doing that work. We haven't even really scratched the surface of community needs” [P12]. With these words, the principal connected authentic collaboration with mutual understanding while admitting that this was an area for growth. Another principal wanted to be more present in the community: A parent called me, because there was a shooting in the neighborhood, and the mother who was involved with the shooting was calling me for advice. And I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve earned my chops. They’re calling me for advice. That's fabulous.’ But am I in the community? No. But, they know that I’m here for them. They can trust me. I mean, do I go to everything? No. Do I go to some stuff? Yes. Do I wish I could go to more? Sure. I got four kids under nine. [P8]
This principal believed that developing strong relationships was important work, but parenting responsibilities limited the extent he was able to build relationships with people outside of the school day and be physically present in the community. The principal also connected building trust with being available, but that availability was within the school and not in the wider community.
The responsibilities of running a building also diverted principals from greater participation in the community. Principals and coordinators viewed the demands of instructional leadership and accountability as consuming principals’ time. One coordinator explained the structural limits facing her elementary-level principal: My school's a semi-small school. We have about 352 students, but we don't have an assistant principal. We don't have a dean. We don't have a school resource officer. We only have a principal. So, it puts them in a unique position that they can't go to a lot of things that they want to go to. [FG3]
As the sole person responsible for a school that also housed an emotional support classroom for students with severe disabilities, the principal felt the need to be present in the school building during the school day.
A few principals expressed beliefs that were contrary to authentic collaboration with communities. One principal, when asked about her role in implementing the community school strategy, revealed a limited mindset toward working with community members: My role was just really to let it happen. The community wanted it. And understanding that my role is here to run the building and to support teachers and professional development and families, but letting this other partner come in and have an equal stake and knowing that the building is not just mine, it's the community's. So, literally, letting it happen. [P12]
This principal acknowledged the community's investment in the school, but her support for the FSCS initiative was passive. Although the principal stated the community partner had an “equal stake,” she viewed her primary role in the enterprise to be gatekeeper.
Next, we see a different principal's tacit support for community work from the perspective of a coordinator. The quote begins with the coordinator sharing an experience from a national community school conference: I actually sat in one of the workshops that was called, ‘When Your Principal is the Barrier.’ And there was a big room full of coordinators that were experiencing the principal as your biggest barrier. And I feel like that was something at the time that I was really struggling with and still kind of do, same concept. It's kind of nice that my principal is a little bit hands off, because then I know what I need to do and I know what's happening. I know the work's getting done, whether or not she recognizes it or supports it or acknowledges it as a school. But, at the same time we would like that support more and getting direct answers when you need them and not just being a passerby. [FG1]
The coordinator described how principals can impede authentic equity-centered community relationships by being unresponsive and failing to recognize or publicly acknowledge the importance of community work. The coordinator also implied that principals could stifle collaboration if they are overcontrolling or withholding information.
Navigating School Contexts
In contrast to the school-centered principals who left community partners to fend for themselves, other principals actively promoted equity-centered community partnerships by acting as cultural brokers or institutional agents. These principals took an active role in aiding community members as they navigated school and district contexts.
Coordinators relied on principals to help them understand how to work effectively in schools. A coordinator explained the difficulties non-educators face in understanding school contexts: There's also this shared leadership component where if we are working towards the same goal, then we need to be speaking the same language. So, it took a lot of work as a community provider to understand the language and dynamics of education. As I shared earlier, I’m not an educator—not in a formal sense, anyway. Even understanding the protocol and the regulations, it was a major learning curve to go into the school. [C4]
This coordinator explained that the jargon and bureaucracy prevalent in school contexts constituted initial barriers to collaboration and communication. This coordinator's principal, and others in our study, acted as cultural brokers who openly shared knowledge about the inner workings of schools with families and community partners.
Principals acting as institutional agents actively helped community members and families accomplish their goals. One such principal described his role as: Clearing the brush so that people can do their jobs…. Like what do I have to get out of the way? Is it a policy? Is it, I’ve got to ruffle some feathers somewhere? Okay, let's do it. Because that's what you need for us to be successful, and which, us being successful, it means our kids are learning. [P9]
In this explanation, the principal removed barriers for students, parents, teachers, staff, and partners. Among the various school and community stakeholders, principals were best positioned to address school policy, navigate district hierarchy, and direct the school's attention and resources. For some principals, “clearing the brush” meant ensuring teachers understood and supported the community school initiative and that “it's all of us working together and it benefits them, and it benefits our students” [P1]. For most principals, removing barriers meant working to facilitate community schools within districts designed to function as closed systems, separate from their communities. A principal described the difficulty in obtaining district approval for community-funded projects: “Every time we went back [to the district], they added another ‘you have to do this.’ And that is where the frustration is. But I think it's because they don't get what we’re trying to do” [P2]. This principal's experience reflects those of several others who lamented the cumbersome process of implementing joint projects tailored to their schools while working with central office administrators and staff focused on regulating and standardizing processes across schools. Principals needed creativity and an intimate understanding of funding streams and district policies to realize a full-service, community-engaged school.
Discussion
School, family, and community engagement is pragmatic, given schools’ ability to serve as a locus for community access to equitable services often devoid in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty unfairly and disproportionality represented by Black and Brown families. FCE is also necessary if there is an honest commitment to dismantling systems of oppression, building capacity, and creating systemic community-wide change (Ishimaru, 2020). Leadership plays a critical role in this work. Green’s (2018a) conception of CEL rests on the premise that school leaders have the propensity “to take actions that reduce opportunity gaps inside and outside of schools” (p. 490). The CEL framework is grounded in a research base that supports critical components of the requisite equity-based knowledge, skills, values, identity, and epistemological positioning that “function as precursors, but also perpetually inform leaders’ actions to improve school and community conditions” (p. 491). The framework's five constructs related to principals’ knowledge and skills were instrumental in helping the authors understand how school leaders thought about equitable engagement and enacted equity-driven practices to advance both school and community well-being.
Principals and coordinators in this study expressed the importance of advocating for school and community equity, yet conceptions of equity were very much embedded within the context of the school. Although responses hinted at the inextricable link between school and community, principals were more inclined to narrowly describe community as school-based stakeholders, signifying how underprepared they were to think about engagement as a means to tackling wider inequities associated with poverty and racism (Green, 2017a). In many ways, findings confirm limitations critical scholars have identified in relation to cross-sector collaborations like the FSCS approach in that schools and their broader communities cannot be disentangled, as both are operationally influenced by community history, power differentials, and injustices linked to race, ethnicity, and class (e.g., Green, 2015; Ishimaru, 2019; 2020; Khalifa, 2012).
Coordinators’ responses on the other hand, demonstrated a broader conception of community, in part, because their formal role required them to interact with families more regularly and connect families with services based upon individualized needs. Maier et al. (2017) indicated that service access in FSCS is often facilitated by a school-based team, in consultation with families and community organizations. Sanders et al. (2019) added a cultural brokering perspective in that coordinators use communication as an effective tool for bridging the gap between families, communities, and their neighborhood school. Both were evident in this study. Coordinators spoke often about negotiating partnerships and service acquisition to help students and families, while also reiterating an informal, though sometimes formalized, need to serve as a liaison between families and the school-based leadership team. Yet, due to this study's primary focus on principals, we are cautious about reading too much into the differences between principals and coordinators in terms of CEL.
As described in the literature, FSCS “arise in neighborhoods where structural forces linked to racism and poverty shape the experiences of young people and erect barriers to learning and school success” (Maier et al., 2017, p. v). These are spaces that are routinely marginalized, yet community residents share a responsibility with school and community partners to work toward equity and provide students with access to resources in school and within their communities. These partnerships should be centered around both school and community development. For principals and coordinators to engage effectively, they must really know the school community and how it has changed (e.g., politically, economically, culturally) over time (Green, 2018b; Khalifa, 2012). Findings from this study confirmed that coordinators, who were more often residents of the community, made stronger connections to community contexts in their responses. Principals rarely connected their leadership attitudes and actions with broader knowledge of community history and when they did it was done to highlight the community from a perspective of disadvantage, exhibiting a surface-level understanding of the strengths and CCW (Yosso, 2005) families bring to the educational process in and outside of school.
Many of the participating principals and coordinators demonstrated what could be characterized as “unconscious incompetence” in terms of CEL. Most seemed simply unaware of the various types of information and assets families and local communities could offer and how they might be engaged to benefit all concerned. When discussing partnerships, principals tended to identify organizations beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood and negated to mention neighborhood leaders altogether. This limited understanding of community strengths influenced how principals navigated community networks and engaged in partnerships. These reasons pinpoint why CEL as a framework for leadership is necessary in the first place. As scholars and practitioners alike consider cross-collaborative improvement strategies like a FSCS, they must recognize that such efforts require “broad coalition building among a variety of neighborhood stakeholders, especially community leaders, and school leaders because of their critical role in fostering equitable and authentic partnerships between schools and communities” (Green et al., 2019, p. 418). By interacting primarily with professionals who offered technical solutions to the schools’ immediate problems, principals were unlikely to surface alternate approaches, make inroads with people who may have been alienated from the school, or better understand how their own actions may perpetuate inequities.
These gaps have implications for individuals who design and implement principal preparation programs and professional development for school leaders. School leaders need to become familiar with and internalize tenets of both CEL (Green, 2018a) and CCW (Yosso, 2005) if they are to “develop critical consciousness which is a deep understanding about the historical, social, and political, and economic contextual structures that maintain oppression in school-communities as well as how power, privilege, and social constructions operate” (Green & Rodgers, 2017, p. 154). Without this critical frame, it becomes impossible to appreciate and support the varying forms of knowledge and wealth students and families bring to their schools. Both aspiring and practicing school leaders need opportunities to critically reflect on what they value in terms of the information they seek, the persons they connect with, and whom they hire (Young & Crow, 2017). To help leaders understand why it is important to seek out employes and partners with deep knowledge of the local community, aspiring and practicing school leaders should read case studies and literature that exemplify how community cultural capital can be leveraged to support students (e.g., Jayakumar et al., 2013; Purgason et al., 2020). Principals and coordinators should be also presented opportunities to become experienced with community asset mapping or community-based equity audits (Green, 2017a).
Some participating principals were predisposed to authentic collaboration with families and community members and wanted to do better, but structural barriers and competing commitments prevented them from shifting their attention away from internal school matters. Community school principals face the same pressures as traditional school principals to focus on instructional leadership and show student growth on state standardized tests. Time constraints and the immediate needs facing principals can predispose them toward unilateral problem solving and a myopic focus on urgent tasks (Hallinger & Murphy, 2013). These realities are reinforced by state and district performance evaluation systems that may not reward principals for meaningful engagement within the community (Mayger & Provinzano, 2021). Yet, CEL, in part, involves expanding one's understanding of who a leader is and what it means to lead. The principal need not be at the vanguard and center of every initiative (Noguera, 2001; Fernández & Paredes Scribner, 2018).
Astute principals magnify others’ efforts and recognize that addressing inequity is a responsibility best shared broadly. Principals, however, face a key dilemma in determining where they must act directly and where to assist as others step forward and lead (Mayger & Hochbein, 2020). A seminal finding from this research was how principals engaged in “brush clearing” and cultural brokering within their schools and districts to enable the shared work of building a FSCS. While these types of internal interactions may appear to be peripheral aspects of community leadership, as long as school and district bureaucracies persist, families and community members will likely need inside assistance in navigating them. The field would benefit from additional research on the aspects of bureaucracy that present the greatest barriers to equity-centered partnerships with families and communities and how school administrators can work toward dismantling them. Finally, this study was specifically focused on principals’ leadership actions and their alignment with core components of CEL. Future research would benefit from a deeper examination of coordinators’ leadership practices, their training and connections to local communities, and the extent to which they embody CEL.
Conclusions
Green (2017b) noted school leaders who exhibit CEL believe all children have the “universal right to live in equitable communities that have a range of opportunities” and as such, are committed to fixing unfair systems that have “greatly shaped inequitable school-community conditions,” not the people who live within those systems (p. 382). While it is true that structural constraints on principals’ time involving instruction, personnel, budgeting, and student services (Grissom et al., 2015) can present barriers to engaging with families and communities, both the community school strategy and ESSA provide tools for school leaders seeking to advance social justice aims. The community school strategy offers a flexible framework that can guide the development of community collaborations that address injustices (Daniel et al., 2020; Frankl, 2016; Quinn & Blank, 2020). ESSA requires schools identified for comprehensive and targeted support to develop improvement plans and interventions in partnership with family members (Henderson, 2016). Under ESSA, federal funds may be spent on FSCS (Maier et al., 2017) and the preparation, professional development, and support of principals in high-needs schools (Fuller et al., 2017). Yet, as findings from this study showed, unless school leaders have the dispositions and skills to create equity-centered partnerships with a broad group of constituents, the adoption of structures and policies that are seemingly inclusive can result in superficial collaborations focused on service provision that do not go far enough to address deeply entrenched systems of power, oppression, and privilege in urban school-communities.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
