The School-Community Connection
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The School-Community Connection
- 1. The school-community connection: School leaders’ motivations for out-of-school activism in political contexts Meagan Richard, Dr. Jason Salisbury, Dr. Shelby Cosner
- 2. Purpose of the Study • Part of a broader study related to principals’ out-of-school activism • What motivates socially-just school leaders to engage in out-of- school activism? – We discuss how the political contexts in which schools are situated connect to these motivations • Social justice leadership… – makes issues of race, class, gender, and other marginalizing conditions central to work, leadership practice, and vision for the school and community (Theoharis, 2007) – addresses issues of oppression and marginalization (Dantley & Tillman, 2006) – keeps at its heart issues of morality (Berkovich, 2014; Blackmore, 2002)
- 3. Activist School Leadership • Activist school leaders extend socially-just school leadership beyond the school walls and… – are oriented toward action and morally transformative – believe that schools alone cannot solve complex social issues – take a strengths-based view of students and the community – create overlapping community-school spaces – view community members as change agents – view educational leadership as transformative political work and see the political nature of schools – resist and counter neoliberal and neoconservative reforms (Dillard, 1995; Anderson, 2009; Foster, 2003; Dantley & Tillman, 2006; Smyth et al., 2009; Ishimaru, 2013; Khalifa, 2012; Berkovich, 2014; Green, 2015; Khalifa, 2012; Ryan, 2016).
- 4. Why is activism important? • Social injustices and oppressive, marginalizing structures outside of the school system reproduce within schools (Rapp, 2002) • Local and national political systems impact students, teachers, school leaders, and the communities in which they are situated (Green, 2015; Hoffman, 2009) • We examine participants’ motivations for activist school leadership within the broader context of neoliberalism and neoconservatism – Neoliberals advocate for unregulated capitalistic markets, disinvesting in social services, the privatization of public goods, a fierce individualism that rejects the public good, and purport that competition increases effectiveness and efficiency (Lipman, 2011).
- 5. Methodology • Semi-structured interviews with 7 participants – 5 female, 2 male – 4 white, 1 Asian, 2 Hispanic – Years as principal at present school ranged 1-11 years – School student populations varied – All neighborhood schools (no charter schools) – Two secondary schools, 5 elementary/middle schools • Large midwestern public school district, “MPS” – 500+ district-run schools, 100+ charters, 350,000+ students – 47% Latinx, 37% Black, 10% White, 4% Asian, 2% multi-racial/other – Choice district – coding
- 6. Findings
- 7. Community-School Connection • Carlos: “As a leader you gotta think that everybody that lives in the community has an impact in your school in one way or another.” • Mark: “[The community is] the context and schools are not separate from the wider context.”
- 8. The Urban Context • Dana: “[On weekends I want to offer] a one-stop shop for [homeless] kids…[who] live in the homeless shelter around the corner, and so they don't have places on the weekends to go and spend time and hang out.” • Carlos: “How can you, how can you ensure that, um, we can have…a reasonable amount of rent, uh, for the community, for the members of your ward, or for the members of my community?”
- 9. District Choice Model • Dana: “[Marketing and enrollment is a] constant battle.” • Natalie: “[I host events each year that are open to the community to] introduce people in the physically surrounding community to what our school is and how we can positively benefit their child, and we want to have a positive role in the community.” • Carlos: “[I go to community events as often as possible] to change that negative note, you know, that a lot of people have in terms of public education and just say hey, you know, here we, here we are and we're doing great stuff, you know.” • Betty’s school hosts monthly community meetings in addition to legal clinics that initially “started off as a recruitment strategy, just for people to kind of get to know” the school.
- 10. National Immigration Policy • Betty: “[Students] were afraid to go to school, um, because they didn't know what was going to happen.” • Julie provided “high-quality legal advice…that they can connect to, not only in a one-time meeting at the school but rather just really be connected with them over time.” • Betty: “Bring resources for them to, uh, become more knowledgeable, um, and have a better [understanding] of, of policy changes related to immigration or issues around immigration…With the immigration piece, assuring our families that kids are safe…and then, them having that trust in us…that's going to ultimately help their student be successful here in school.”
- 11. Promoting Student Equity • Betty: “There are other things that ultimately impact your kids, but, and may not appear to…getting involved with communities, for example, on issues related to community violence does impact our families”…“ultimately those things do support, uh, our efforts to improve their academic performance.” • Natalie: “[I formed school-community partnerships] almost always to benefit my kids. My students. That was, like, exclusively why I did it. Like, everything you did had the angle of how was this going to help.” • Patrick: “[the] core work is really trying to support what's happening with students in classrooms or in their experience in a school.”
- 12. Conclusions Out-of- school activism Improved student outcomes and experiences Given that the community and school are linked…
- 13. Implications • Principal preparation programs prepare leaders to engage in social justice work • Encourage socially-just school leaders to engage in out-of-school activism • Other themes to investigate – Impact of school choice policies and the changing role of principals – Silencing of principal speech and risks – Involving students and other stakeholders in this research
- 14. Thank you! Meagan Richard, mricha44@uic.edu Dr. Jason Salisbury, jsalis2@uic.edu Dr. Shelby Cosner, sacosner@uic.edu
Editor's Notes
- We situate socially-just school leadership within this context to interrogate how these contexts motivate out-of-school activism. When we say “political context” we are thinking of resource distribution, power structures, and we specifically use the lens of neoliberalism and neoconservatism to describe our broader political contexts.
- We situate socially-just school leadership within this context to interrogate how these contexts motivate out-of-school activism. When we say “political context” we are thinking of resource distribution, power structures, and we specifically use the lens of neoliberalism and neoconservatism to describe our broader political contexts.
- We situate socially-just school leadership within this context to interrogate how these contexts motivate out-of-school activism. When we say “political context” we are thinking of resource distribution, power structures, and we specifically use the lens of neoliberalism and neoconservatism to describe our broader political contexts.
- Give details on why this was convenience and criterion sampling. Schools ranged from largest student racial category being 94% Hispanic to 46% Black to 69% White. 12% low income to 70% low income. 3% limited English proficiency to 52%.
- This is what we might expect to see given the theories that injustices outside of the school reproduce within the schools. Participants were aware of this connection. We anticipated that school leaders would ground their out-of-school work in the idea that work within the community would eventually benefit students.
- Participants frequently noted inadequate resources, violence, gentrification, and other issues within the city itself as their motivations to do activist work. Mark described opening up a field house as a club for parents. The field house was adjacent to the school’s playground. He intended for parents’ presence to have an impact in terms of positive loitering so that he could keep the playground gates open to the community (rather than closing them completely) and provide a community resource without worrying about gang violence. Dana hoped to build a gym within her school so that she could start offering it as a place for homeless kids within the community to hang out. Both Carlos and Dana talked about the impacts of gentrification on their school buildings, as gentrification made rent prices increase which drove community members away. So both Carlos and Dana advocated with local politicians to keep rents affordable. Participants also opened up their spaces for community meetings.
- Our participants described the fact that the district has a school choice model as creating a constant battle for student enrollment and serious fears about their school closing. This finding actually came as a surprise—we noticed during the first interviews that principals tended to say that they engaged with the community to basically make their schools look better and more appealing to potential students and families. So we started asking specifically about this in later interviews. This included trying to simply be out in the community to have a positive presence of the school, opening school grounds like the playground to the community, and having students take a positive presence in the community. In a preliminary focus group we did, one principal we spoke with said he had students shovel the neighborhood’s sidewalks as a way to fight the neighborhood’s assumptions about the students.
- Participants, especially those working in schools that served high levels of Latinx students, talked about the impacts within the school and surrounding community of the Trump travel ban, repeal of DACA, and the general discourse on immigration. Students and families were leaving the school and community because of their fears. Julie hosted community events to provide resources and free legal support related to immigration. Betty similarly hosted community meetings around immigration. Carlos partnered with two agencies to host trainings on immigration rights for parents and the communities
- Thus, promoting student equity was an overarching and foundational motivation tied to all of the work leaders did. This occurred to the point that leaders worried about being too focused on issues outside of the school because they wanted their immediate work to be focused on improving the lives of students.
- In this study we found that school leaders are motivated to conduct out-of-school activism because of local and national political contexts. These motivations were undergirded by leaders’ belief that the community and school are linked, and school leaders’ ultimate “end goals” were to impact student outcomes. While this study was mainly exploratory and intended to begin consideration of this topic, we do have a few implications. Some of the leaders spoke about how having course content in their preparation programs related to political and critical awareness was important to their success in working with the community. So preparation programs should be sure to offer this content. Current leaders who consider themselves to be “socially-just” should consider how doing out-of-school social justice work could complement their current work, given the connections between school and community. We have a few avenues to propose for future research based on our data. First, we think it’s worth considering how school choice models have impacted the role of the principal. It seemed from our data that a key piece of school leaders’ roles in MPS is to market the school and drive enrollment. It would be interesting to consider how neoliberal marketization of schools has impacted leader roles, and then consider implications for that. We also found that participants faced numerous risks and barriers to activism which merit future research. Particularly interesting was the salient fear participants expressed related to their ability to speak out within the community, especially their fear of being silenced through job termination.
- In this study we found that school leaders are motivated to conduct out-of-school activism because of local and national political contexts. These motivations were undergirded by leaders’ belief that the community and school are linked, and school leaders’ ultimate “end goals” were to impact student outcomes. While this study was mainly exploratory and intended to begin consideration of this topic, we do have a few implications. Some of the leaders spoke about how having course content in their preparation programs related to political and critical awareness was important to their success in working with the community. So preparation programs should be sure to offer this content. Current leaders who consider themselves to be “socially-just” should consider how doing out-of-school social justice work could complement their current work, given the connections between school and community. We have a few avenues to propose for future research based on our data. First, we think it’s worth considering how school choice models have impacted the role of the principal. It seemed from our data that a key piece of school leaders’ roles in MPS is to market the school and drive enrollment. It would be interesting to consider how neoliberal marketization of schools has impacted leader roles, and then consider implications for that. We also found that participants faced numerous risks and barriers to activism which merit future research. Particularly interesting was the salient fear participants expressed related to their ability to speak out within the community, especially their fear of being silenced through job termination.