Schools as Community Hubs: Integrating Support Services to Drive Educational Outcomes

Education and Support Services There is a growing recognition that the most effective strategies to address the problems of struggling neighborhoods—from health to school success and poverty—involve the focused use of integrated strategies. Integrated strategies can address challenges that are complicated and interdependent in nature. For example, a change in health can influence students’ academic outcomes, and academic outcomes can influence the economic and social health of a community, often in unpredictable ways. As a result of these interdependencies, organizations are increasingly wrapping their arms around whole, multi-faceted problems to solve a particular problem. To do this, practitioners are exploring ways to use their institutions as “hubs” to organize and deliver a range of services beyond their traditional core offerings. Examples include hospitals utilizing “population health” strategies, and community schools and public charter schools providing a range of services, including social service support, “two-generation” support to parents, and health services. As schools seek to tackle the achievement gap, a critical question is how should they organize and act as hubs of services for students and the school community? In turn, as schools transform themselves to achieve Managing Population Health: The Role of the Hospital, 2012. Butler, Grabinsky, and Masi, 2015. Executive Summary