IT WAS in the early 1970s that I first took a group of school board members and administrators to Flint, Mich., to visit their community schools’ program. Flint had been the recipient of a Mott grant to develop the concept of using schools as the center for community activities. The initial thinking was to bring students back into the school building for recreational and athletic programs, but it eventually morphed into bringing community-based programs into the schools as well.

Since then, I have been a staunch supporter of creating partnerships between schools and community agencies that can add resources beneficial to the students. Unfortunately, the concept has not always been popular with administrators. I occasionally encountered principals who would build walls around their schools and deny entry to community-based agencies. They claimed the students as theirs during the school day and the community organizations could have them after school hours. Recent events have necessitated a breakdown of those barriers.

Perhaps an unseen benefit of the pandemic has been the growing interest in focusing on the needs of the whole child. This has been precipitated by the significant increase in mental health issues among students and the alarming rate of behavioral incidents. The Biden administration urges that federal American Rescue Plan dollars be used to provide adequate support to our students through the hiring of appropriate staff and developing partnerships with community-based agencies. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has promoted these alliances and urges that districts use ARP funds.

A survey conducted by AASA in September showed that districts are using ARP funding to expand whole child support that includes social, emotional, mental and the physical health of students. AASA has received a grant from the Mott Foundation that will allow us to form partnerships with organizations like the National Summer Learning Association, the Afterschool Alliance and the National League of Cities to promote school-community alliances.

Complicated Task

AASA, through its Learning 2025 initiative and several of our cohort programs, further supports the education of the whole child by focusing not just on the academic needs, but on the mental health and welfare of the student as well. Educators understand that a child may not be able to focus on learning if he or she comes to school hungry, sick, from a dysfunctional home or without a home.

Linda Darling-Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, has focused her research on the social and emotional needs of children. In a School Administrator article (September 2018), she writes, “Social and emotional supports for students in school have frequently been called the missing link in education. Decades of research confirm that students’ social, emotional, cognitive and academic development are deeply intertwined and vital for student learning. When we help students to engage productively with one another, understand themselves and how they think, and better handle the stresses and challenges in their lives, we prepare them for success now and in the future.”

Although the term social and emotional learning, along with critical race theory, has become entwined in political debates, nevertheless most educators understand that dealing with the needs of the whole child is a precursor to academic success. Staffing shortages and the lack of trained personnel have complicated the ability of schools to properly meet the needs of their students, making cooperative arrangements with community-based agencies a desirable solution.

A Routing Role

Since my years as superintendent in Fairfax County, Va., I have been affiliated with a program known as Communities In Schools, which I brought into several of our elementary schools. Founder Bill Milliken started the program in New York City in the 1970s with an idea like what Flint was doing at that time but with a significant twist. A CIS coordinator working in the school would function as a “router” who would identify student needs and match them with the appropriate agency that could meet those needs well. Today CIS is in 26 states, in 2,900 sites, serving 1.6 million students.

Programs like CIS provide integrated student support services to address the needs of the whole child. All children benefit from this approach. Although marginalized children may disproportionally have needs, poverty affects children of all races and color: Educators who are aware of the social and emotional needs of their students will do everything they can to intervene, but they also must focus on the academics. Community-based organizations can help teachers with that additional responsibility, creating a team approach to meeting all the needs of their students.