Back in 2009, La Frontera Partnered with Apollo Middle School’s principal, Ray Chavez, to begin the implementation of Community Schools at his school. La Frontera then convened a coalition to address gang and youth violence centered around school sites. The informal coalition involved law enforcement, educators, community stakeholders, NPOs, and government agencies. This eventually evolved to the Southern Arizona Community School Alliance. This effort evolved to gaining funding from private foundations that led to community school model implementation in TUSD, SUSD, and Flowing Wells.

The Southern Arizona Community School Alliance is no longer active. We know that there are deeper, root issues that cause gang and youth violence. Higher Ground wanted to get involved in making Community Schools a sustainable, locally-led, and asset-based strategy.

In 2015, the City of Tucson’s Mayor, Jonathan Rothschild, launched a community-wide education initiative to address the needs of youth in Tucson through a grant that was awarded through the Corporation for National and Community Service.

This initiative was spurred by dismal statistics about the youth in our city. According to the 2014 US Census, 25% of youth in Tucson are living in poverty with an average graduation rate of only 73% at schools in the city’s low-income areas. The initiative targeted six high schools to adopt the Community School model, in an effort to increase graduation rates at these schools and ensure graduating seniors have access to post-graduation opportunities.

Thus began a partnership between La Frontera, Arizona Serve, a program of Prescott College, Higher Ground, and many others to launch the city-wide development of the Community Schools Model in Tucson, with Americorps members designated as the primary support.

In 2017, they renewed the grant and placed in the leadership of La Frontera, Arizona Serve, and Higher Ground a Resource Center. Working with TUSD and SUSD, the data drove the focus to shift to middle school and earlier high school age groups and increase the attendance rate of chronically absent kids. Then in 2018, the National Center for Community Schools and Children’s Aid began to get involved in guiding the efforts and model.

On April 23rd, 2021, over 25 stakeholders in Tucson attended a meeting with New Mexico’s Community School Statewide Coalition Executive Director David Greenberg to discuss how we can make Restart SMART sustainable.

This meeting is the first step to catalyze the formation of a county-wide community school coalition that will work on sustainability, advocacy, and amplification of messaging of the model. A strong coalition is a key element in all successful community schools around the nation. This coalition ensures that leaders from every community sector are aligned with the community development strategies informed and led by the community members at each site.

During this meeting, it was recognized that the Community Schools model has taken many iterations in Tucson and has a rich history that we can take advantage of. Leveraging this rich history, we can be a model to other cities on how successful implementation of community schools can be truly led by the populations it serves.

Read the notes here.

Currently, we are continuing to advance Community Schools in Tucson by focusing on building the Coalition and continuing our work with several school districts through our Restart SMART Initiative.

Restart SMART was birthed out of the Community Schools effort with modifications specific to address the current environment of the pandemic regarding school closures. Read more about Restart SMART here.