Your Community Passed Your School Budget — Now What?
There’s good news and there’s bad news about schools and their communities these days — both here in Vermont and across the nation.
Some bad news is that schools are being used as places to spread fear and mistrust. There are national campaigns to generate ill will toward educators who are working to make public schools more democratic and inclusive. The ill will that’s produced is then exploited by those who want to drive public dollars to private institutions.
Feelings of anger and distrust are also exploited by politicians who are desperate for the votes of middle- and working-class people— but have no policy platform that would materially benefit those people. Such politicians prefer a debate about brutality depicted in novels than a debate about the brutality of a for-profit health-care system or other policy problems that need fixing.
So, schools are battlefields in culture wars that compromise trust in the public sector and distract us from substantive policy solutions to address societal inequity. That’s bad news.
The good news for Vermonters is that — while we are vulnerable to these national forces working to spread division — we are not so easily divided or made to fear each other. Our daily lives are more interconnected than in many places, which creates trust and mutual understanding.
Even so, Vermonters can’t take our community connections for granted. We must intentionally build and rebuild them — and schools play an important role. With a majority of school budgets just approved at Town Meeting, and with many contentious school board elections now behind us, this spring is the perfect time to redouble our efforts to build bridges between schools, families, and the wider citizenry who support public education with their hard-earned tax dollars. There are countless ways to do this. Here are three of them:
1. Standards that stand for community: Vermont teachers are guided in what they teach by state standards in each subject. Schools and districts have latitude in adapting these standards to their local learning goals and graduation expectations. How these standards are written — word by word — can matter a lot in terms of what we teach, and can say a great deal about a school’s priorities. With this in mind, we should write learning standards so that they drive instruction in the direction of community engagement.
For instance, the wording of the state’s “Writing” standard requires students to be able to “produce clear and coherent writing for a range of tasks, purposes and audiences.” This is fine, but it could be better. Adding just one word is all that’s needed: students “produce clear and coherent writing for a range of authentic tasks, purposes and audiences.” Instead of book reports only read by the teacher, students could be writing book reviews for the wider community. Instead of persuasive writing written just for their teacher, students could be writing authentic letters to the editor of local papers. Indeed, instead of writing to journalists, students can write as journalists themselves.
Other standards can be likewise adjusted. Our “Civics” standard, in Social Studies, stops just short of compelling active engagement in the community. It reads: “Students act as productive citizens by understanding the history, principles and foundations of our American democracy, and by acquiring the ability to become engaged in civic and democratic processes.”
The “ability to become,” or the potential to do something, is not the same as becoming it and doing it. Consider wording like this instead: “Students gain and apply an understanding of the history, principles and foundations of our American democracy through engagement in civic and democratic processes.” Supporting students to be engaged is different than just preparing them for it. Wording like this sets a much higher bar and demands we look for connections with the wider community.
2. Staffing to support community-engaged teaching: Revising our standards to drive community engagement sends a strong message, but without material support, it won’t translate to meaningful action. As schools fill positions this spring — and create new ones — for the year to come, consider full-time positions that support teachers in designing curriculum that engages the community.
Many schools have positions that support individual students with internship opportunities in our towns. This is important, but it’s not the same as supporting teachers in designing community-engaged curriculum for all students. School communities deserve to have both.
Schools often have extra staffing to support literacy, math, behavioral intervention, and social-emotional learning. Community involvement should be no different. And authentic engagement with the community has pay-off in those other areas as well. Consider how motivated children are — and how well children behave — when they are completing a task that meets a real need and helps them feel important.
3. Each family known, visible, and valued: Every student deserves to know that their family, history and culture have worth. Early in the school year, teachers can establish trust with students and families by explicitly valuing elements of where each child comes from. Lessons like this one from Learning for Justice invite students to explore the diverse religious heritage of the United States. And this lesson invites students to reflect on their cultural backgrounds. “Where I’m From” poems are another powerful way to show all students and families that schools see and value their strengths and stories.
For schools that are ready to allocate resources for systems that value every family, student-led conferences (SLCs) are one structure to consider. These conferences happen multiple times a year and require students to take the lead in demonstrating what they know and can do. Family members are an audience, along with the teacher.
In these conferences, the child’s voice and experience are at the center. This is important because school folks often speak a different language than the communities we serve. We talk about stuff like “performance indicators” and “graphic organizers” and use acronyms like PBIS, EST, MTSS — language that isn’t common in the world outside of schools. At a Student-Led Conference, the child helps bridge these worlds. A teacher’s assessment still matters, of course, and students need to understand and communicate how they are doing in their work. But the words in focus are the common language spoken by the child they both care for.
I recently shared information on SLCs for the future principals I’m working with at the Upper Valley Educators Institute, including resources from Expeditionary Learning (EL). As they say at EL, an SLC builds a student’s “sense of responsibility and accountability for their own learning.” It also reinforces the responsibility of families and schools to work together in the joint project of educating our children.
This spring, as schools turn to planning for next year, one focus should be the strategic resumption of activities that bring students into the community, and bring the community into the school. Focusing on our learning standards, our staffing models, and on practices that value every child’s voice and story are ways to build such connections. These efforts help engage students in learning, and they prompt adults to engage collaboratively with each other. And all of our communities are going to need healthy habits of collaboration and sturdy common ground to stand on in the years to come.
