Flint Approach to Community Involvement

Origin of the Concept

Manley was not the first to conceive of a broader vision for public schools. The concept of full-service community schools is more than 100 years old, originating with Jane Addams and others during what is termed the Progressive Era, from 1880 to 1917. Manley credited two of his professors at Michigan State Normal College, Drs. Wilbur P. Bowen and Charles M. Elliott, with introducing him to the concepts of community schools. Later on, he admitted that he had not heard of either Elsie Clapp or John Dewey when he first spearheaded community schools in Flint, even though their work was consistent with the concept of community schools. Even so, Manley took the idea and implemented it on a far broader scale than others with the same ideas.

Two concepts from the field of sociology are important in understanding community schools: civic capacity and social capital. Civic capacity involves organizations and institutions outside of education playing an active role in supporting schools in efforts to provide services to students. In creating civic capacity to better serve children and youth, communities must abandon blaming schools and focus instead on ways to help children and families improve. Communities committed to developing civic capacity to better serve children and families require communitywide strategies to provide social and health services at the school site. Such strategies minimally involve school district and city government collaboration.

In many cases, improved coordination of services to families would reduce redundancy and increase cost efficiency. However, interagency cooperation is challenging and fraught with many pitfalls. Strong, focused leadership and support from mayors, superintendents, school boards, and others are necessary to create and maintain interagency collaborations in community schools.

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