Going to Scale with School-Community Collaborations

School Administrator, Nov, 1996 by Larry F. Guthrie

Program directors also should anticipate upcoming resource needs. In Elk Grove, Calif., Superintendent David Gordon found ways to support the Healthy Start programs a year and a half before the funding ran out. For one thing, the school district obtained a waiver from the state allowing them to offer broader preventive services.

More importantly, the superintendent convinced his school board that the collaborations were a good investment so school-community collaborations now are supported through the general fund. "We made the case that these projects were benefiting the basic program, which is kids learning, and we were able to back it up with results," Gordon explains. He also stressed the need for good evaluation data. Without it, expansion and even continuation would be jeopardized.

Evaluation of the collaboration and reporting is critical to scaling up for several reasons: (1) to determine whether the collaboration is effective and should be expanded; (2) to convince funders; and (3) to attract new sites and partners. Even data on attendance or parent satisfaction can carry weight. Measuring the savings from prevention is difficult since, by definition, we expect the outcome of prevention to be nothing. Nevertheless, schools can compile and report stories where they have seen savings or extrapolate them from the services provided. In Elk Grove, volunteer dentists conducted 7,000 free dental screenings and uncovered urgent care needs in more than 10 percent of the youngsters. The potential savings in dental services and missed school were considerable.

Successful scaling up also may depend on one's ability to monitor legislation and funding-and not just in education. The late '90s will be a time of dramatic change in social policy in this country with anticipated reform in education, health, and welfare. The trend not only will be one of downsizing, but also shifts from categorical programs toward block grants and greater accountability.

Localized Factors

Michael Fullan says in his 1992 book, The New Meaning of Educational Change, that changing people and institutions is best accomplished by applying a few "powerful themes." Because scaling up school-community collaborations will occur on a case-by-case basis and depend on local interest, commitment, and capacities, two complementary approaches seem most appropriate: (1) a focus on capacity building and (2) support of professional development. The job of the reformer is in getting that classroom, school, or community ready.

To spread from a single interagency collaboration site requires you build capacity and support for the change process in other communities. Capacity building means creating a vision, fostering buy-in, and developing local leadership. It also means developing the institutional norms and incentives that will support change.

A vision of how to design comprehensive services for children and families no doubt gave birth to the first collaborations in the district. In new settings, the challenge is to help the people come up with their own vision of where they can go-what fits for that school and that community.