Community Schools: the Wrong Solution

by Sue Greenwald, M.D.

In 2024, Nebraska State Senator Walz introduced a bill called the Community Schools Act. LB 1347. Thankfully, it died in committee this year. If it had been passed, it would have have threatened the wealth and property of every Nebraska citizen. Unfortunately, it is likely to be re-introduced, as it is the latest utopian fever dream of the education lobby.

The Community Schools Act states: “Every child should be able to grow up and have the opportunity to achieve his or her dreams and contribute to the well-being of society. Every neighborhood deserves a public school that fully delivers on that promise.”

It may be hard to disagree with that emotionally charged statement, but keep reading.

The bill is 12 pages and we highly recommend that you read all of it. https://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/108/PDF/Intro/LB1347.pdf

Sec. 3.  For purposes of the Community Schools Act:

(1) Community school means a public school that includes all of the following:

(a) Integrated student supports that address out-of-school barriers to learning through partnerships with social and health service agencies and providers, that are coordinated by a community school director, and that may include, but are not necessarily limited to, medical, dental, vision care, and mental health services or counselors to assist with housing, transportation, nutrition, immigration, or criminal justice issues;

(b) Expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities, including before-school, after-school, weekend, and summer programs, that provide additional academic instruction, individualized academic support, enrichment activities, and learning opportunities emphasizing real-world learning and community problem solving and that may include, but are not necessarily limited to, art, music, drama, creative writing, hands-on experience with engineering or science, tutoring and homework help, and recreational programs that enhance and are consistent with the school curriculum;

(c) Active family and community engagement strategies that bring a student's family and the community into the school as partners in the student's education and makes the school a neighborhood hub and that provides adults with educational opportunities, including, but not limited to, English as a second language classes, green card or citizenship preparation, computer skills, art, or other programs that bring community members into the building for meetings and events; and

(d) Collaborative leadership and practices that build a culture of professional learning, collective trust, and shared responsibility using strategies which shall, at a minimum, include a school-based leadership team, a community school director, and a communitywide leadership team and may include, but are not necessarily limited to, other leadership and governance teams, teacher learning communities, and other staff to manage the multiple, complex joint work of school and community organizations;

To implement this cradle to grave socialist agenda in One School District would require the following:

One full-time staff member serving as the Community School Director in each school building

A “school-based” leadership team at each school

A Community School Initiative Director to support the Community School Directors and aid implementation of integrated community supports. (It’s possible you will need one to three of these depending on the size of the district)

Also, presumably at the ESU (Educational Service Unit) level, a Communitywide leadership team.

(4) Communitywide leadership team means a team at the local education agency level that is responsible for guiding the vision, policy, resource alignment, implementation, oversight, and goal-setting for community school programs within a local education agency. Such team shall include representatives from the local education agency, teachers, school leaders, students and family members from the eligible schools, community members, state-level partners that involve representatives from government agencies, relevant unions, nonprofit and other community-based partners, and if applicable, the community school initiative director;

That paragraph is a mouthful, but it implies that state agencies such as Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) would need to hire on more staff, “community based partners” would be lining up for some of that sweet, sweet taxpayer money, and “relevant unions” such as the NSEA (Nebraska State Education Association) would be strong-arming all of those new hires to pay dues and complement the narrative. Non-profits would include upstanding community servants like BLM and Planned Parenthood.

The bill pays lip service to having parents and students on the community leadership team, but what parent or student has the time for such falderol unless they are either a) an ideologue or b) well paid?

The bill also calls for nutrition services, homelessness prevention, juvenile crime prevention and rehabilitation, legal services particularly for immigrants, transportation to access the expanded and enriched learning opportunities, as well as the family and community engagement. Therefore, bus drivers, food servers, social workers and probation officers would need more overtime pay.

Will lawyers line up to provide cut-rate service to immigrants through the school district? How are they going to be paid?

That isn’t all! On the state level the Dept. of Education would hire 3 full-time coordinators and provide technical assistance, assist the ESU’s in forming a task force, assist school districts with materials and grant funding, and provide planning implementation and renewal grants for the project. That’s at least 3 more managers right there.

The state budget set aside for all this is $1 million. That budget isn’t for one district, it is for the entire state. To put that into perspective, the average ESU budget is $10 million, and there are 17 of those. Your property taxes would presumably pick up the considerable shortfall in funding.

Medical, mental health and dental expenses are being charged to state-funded Medicaid in the states that have picked up the concept. Planned Parenthood clinics within the schools are the trend in California, where no child should go without their abortions or cross-sex hormones and parents don’t need to be notified.

Mental health delivered by school districts has been proven to be harmful. There has been a well-researched book written about the subject by Abigail Shrier, which we have previously reviewed. Should Schools Become Mental Health Practitioners?

Kearney Public Schools implemented a program last year that allows students to contact a counselor online or by phone. Named the Student Assistance Program or SAP, it does require parental consent. The cost to the district is $215,000 per year. After the first year, only a handful of students had used the service. It’s impossible to say if it was worth it, but that is just one “community-based partner” out of potentially dozens that would take advantage of this Community educational model.

As a taxpayer, ponder picking up all the tab for this “community,” and then throw in the factor of unlimited illegal immigration. (Pause here and let that sink in.)

The NSEA teacher’s union, the same people who are on their second petition drive to take down school choice options in our state because it’s “too expensive,” are the head cheerleaders for this boondoggle. We doubt they will recognize the irony.

If one does an online search of “Community Schools,” the articles all seem to start in 2022 and are mostly written by the NEA (National Education Association) and woke education journals. They all talk about how this new concept is going to solve all the problems in education, and how many billions are being spent on it. However, if you can find an article regarding actual results, please share it.

The glowing reviews of this panacea became crystal clear when we found this article in Forbes about the millions allocated in 2022 to this project by the Biden administration. It is ALWAYS about the money.

“President Biden’s budget request for the U.S. Department of Education includes an investment of $443 million to expand the Full-Service Community Schools program. That’s more than 10 times the amount invested in fiscal year 2021.”

The concept of “Community Schools” is the off-shoot of Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child, which is the off-shoot of Social Emotional Learning, which is the main vehicle to supply critical theory, gender theory, and social agitation lessons to the school day. The goal of ALL OF IT is to “transform the culture” of students. They don’t hide it, the phrase features promininently on every website touting these programs.

From the Nebraska Department of Education website: (We can’t guess what a director of the “Whole Child Program” does, but Nebraska has one of those.)

Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child

School leaders know that health and academic achievement are deeply connected and interdependent. Using an equity framework to consider each child holistically can help support student success. Educators are called upon to be creative to make it possible for students of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, cultures and languages, religion, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, ages, and socioeconomic statuses to be healthy, engaged, supported and ready to learn.

If that language sounds a lot like the language of the “Community Schools Act,” it is. It all comes from the flowery prose of Neo-Marxism. The definition of “equity framework” is when one views everything in life through the lens of intersectionality. The definition of “intersectionality” is one’s collection of victimhood traits. For example, a black, Muslim, lesbian woman has intersectionality. A white, Christian, heterosexual male does not.

Modern schools have become less and less about teaching history, reading and math. They have become more and more about medicalizing and mentalizing students.

The schools have become pass-through organizations for taxpayer money that is flowing into private companies and non-governmental organizations. Following that business model, every student needs to become a patient. If they are not ADHD, or trans or “anxious” before the school gets to them, they must be made so.

Some of those companies sell Social Emotional Learning which is marketed as mental health, but in reality is the on-boarding ramp to the “anxiety” train. Lessons peddle moral relativism mixed with critical theory and transhumanist philosophies. The confused students are then identified through rigged surveys as anxious or depressed, so the school will appear to need more mental health care in the form of more SEL.

Other private companies sell attention problems in the form of online curriculum that has them reading “excerpts” of concepts beyond their understanding, jettisoning the use of actual books. (The Problem with CKLA).

Those are the problems we already have in our schools, which are creating students who perseverate on their emotions, rather than learn to think critically. The Community Schools movement is the typical high-priced government solution to the problem the government created. Most students in Nebraska don’t need more “support,” they need books, boundaries and meritocracy. (Books Are Still Relevant).