San Diego Unified will soon triple its number of campuses that offer on-site wraparound services, from health care to food pantries, for some of the district’s most vulnerable students.
They’re known as community schools. Through family engagement and partnerships with service providers, the district hopes kids will miss fewer days of school — and that its dwindling enrollment numbers will improve.
Services offered can differ at each campus depending on the community’s need, but can include access to free food, health care, counseling, dental services, tutoring, after-school programs and parenting education.
Ten additional campuses — six elementary schools, one middle school and three high schools — will become a community school this upcoming year. Another fifteen will join the pipeline, meaning officials will prepare to transform them into community schools in the coming years.
Already, five campuses — including Hoover High, where the district held an event this month to spotlight its transformation — have become community schools.
The move is part of a more than $4 billion statewide effort to convert thousands of public schools into community schools as a way to combat the damage incurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated learning barriers such as poverty, food insecurity and others. Research shows community schools, which have existed for decades, have a positive effect on graduation rates, academic progress, attendance and a reduction in disciplinary incidents.
As inewsource previously reported, nearly 8,500 San Diego Unified students are unhoused as unsheltered homelessness has dramatically increased in the region. The district also saw its already declining enrollment rates worsen during the pandemic: It saw about a 3.4% drop during 2021-22, and another 1% decrease the following year.
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