The main goal of the Ottawa Community Schools Network (OCSN), discussed in a recent article, is to build Community Schools. The Community School Playbook, linked on the OCSN website resource page, explains the process and philosophy of a community school. “Every student should have access to schools with the resources, opportunities, and supports that make academic success possible. [] Doing so will provide more equitable opportunities.” It also states, “What they [community schools] do share, however, is a commitment to partnership and to rethinking. [] School staff, under the leadership of the principal and community school director, work with families and community partners to create and implement a shared vision of student and school success.” In my view, Community Schools are a tool for transforming American schools to be the focal point of a collectivist vision.
Community Schools are built upon four pillars:
Integrated student supports
Expand and enriched learning time and opportunities
Active family and community engagement
Collaborative leadership and practices
Image: Ottawa Community School Network – Who We Are
The First Pillar: Integrated Student Supports from the Community Schools Playbook, is a focus on implementing the Whole Child approach to education. The Whole Child approach encompasses all needs of children including education, medical care, dental care, and mental health care. In other words, in one building children can have all of their basic needs met by government officials. The end goal is complete state control over children, but this does not happen with a quick transformation. Rather, slowly implementing the ideals of the Whole Child approach shifts the role of parenting to the state over time, and the vehicle of community schools facilitates the transfer.
The Second Pillar: Expanded and Enriched Learning Time and Opportunities, sounds good, but is a guise for implementing school during all waking hours including summers and weekends. This does not mean offering a few more sports, academics, and enrichment programs. It means extending the school day so that the state can take over parental duties. As students in these programs spend fewer hours with family and more time with state employees, they become conditioned to accept dependence on the system.
The Community Schools Playbook advocates for year-round school and states, “Many community schools stay open year-round, from dawn to dusk, and on weekends.” Community schools are described as a “core element of an equity strategy. [] The most comprehensive community schools are academic and social centers where educators, families, and neighbors come together to support innovative learning and to address the impact of out-of-school factors, such as poverty, racism, and violence, which can undermine the effectiveness of in-school opportunities.”
The Third Pillar: Active Family and Community Engagement seeks to involve families in the education process which is actually a good thing, but this pillar also “leverages local resources to address education inequities.” This idea is a slippery slope which could be used to justify a school’s intrusion into the family.
The Fourth Pillar: Collaborative Leadership and Practices is all about collectivism (socialist forms of government). Some phrases that jump out are;
shared vision and goals
distributing responsibilities
collective expertise of all stakeholders
collaborative leadership
resource distribution
In addition to the Community School Playbook, the Community Schools website has links for messaging to sell these ideas and for passing legislation.
This should scare every citizen. These are radical ideas being pushed upon our communities and they have already made inroads in Ottawa County.