The Promise of Community Schools
Greater Than is pleased to introduce this new bi-monthly “Greater Futures” blog that will provide important information and commentary on our work. We hope you enjoy this inaugural October 2026 edition, and we welcome your reactions, comments, and questions about this and all future Greater Futures blog posts by emailing us at info@greater-than.org.
The Promise of Community Schools
Continuous evolution, adaptability, and expansion of our innovative community-school partnership model has been a hallmark of Greater Than’s work over the past 16 years. Three compelling examples:
In 2010, we took the bold step of transitioning from our historic single grade-level approach to a “whole school/whole child” model that provides comprehensive supports from pre-K through post-secondary and into career. While our previous model reached a total of 850 students over 35 years, our new model is now reaching over 1,100 students per year.
When the pandemic hit in 2019-21, national education pundits uniformly projected that recovery from related learning losses would be particularly challenging for students from under-resourced communities. Indeed, that has proven disturbingly true nationwide. But to buck that trend, Greater Than doubled-down on our supports for students and families - with clear and impressive results, including a 90% average on-time high school graduation rate over the past three years (2023-26) in our Reynolds School District partnership.
In 2019, we also began our new long-term partnership with the Hillsboro School District, which is also producing impressive results - including much improved middle school attendance rates - and has allowed Greater Than to demonstrate a more robust proof-of-concept for our model.
Most recently, after an extensive “expansion planning” process that concluded earlier in 2026, our Board committed to two strategies for deepening and broadening Greater Than’s impact going forward:
Continue deepening and broadening our programming and impact within our long-standing Reynolds and Hillsboro School District partnerships, and
Explore a broader leadership role for Greater Than toward catalyzing a “community schools” movement in Oregon.
The core tenets and four pillars of “community schools” are remarkably similar to the tenets and pillars that undergird Greater Than’s work. Importantly, we also believe that a community schools framework - if broadly adopted statewide - is the most compelling strategy we have seen in decades toward transforming outcomes for Oregon education. Already, several states have begun experimenting with community schools models - nowhere more aggressively than in California, where thousands of schools are in the process of transitioning to community schools approaches. While still early in implementation, California is already seeing significant results in reducing chronic absenteeism, which is also a major current challenge in Oregon.
So what is a “community school”? For those of you who have followed Greater Than’s work over the past 16 years, the following four pillars should sound very familiar.
Community School Pillars
Collaborative Leadership and Practices – including shared governance between schools and community
Parents, students, teachers, principals, and community partners build a culture of professional learning, collective trust, and shared responsibility using strategies such as site-based leadership teams and teacher learning communities.
Shared identity and shared purpose. Elevated parent and student leadership.
Family and Community Partnership – including strong parent leadership and a wide range of community partners
Promoting interaction via effective communication strategies among families, administration, and teachers helps families to be more involved in the decisions about their children’s education.
Schools function as neighborhood hubs. There are educational opportunities for adults, and family members can share their stories and serve as equal partners in promoting student success.
Parents in authentic leadership roles help identify barriers and gain access to adult learning.
Enriched and Expanded Learning Time – both better learning practices in the classroom and additional learning time outside of normal classroom periods
Enriched learning emphasizes real-world learning, community problem solving, and expanded skill-building.
Expanded schedules via after-school, weekend, and summer programs provide academic instruction and individualized support - including exposure to college and career possibilities.
Integrated Student Supports – providing wrap-around services and family resources
A dedicated staff member coordinates support programs to address out-of-school learning barriers for students and families, both through direct service and through leveraging robust partnerships.
Mental/physical health and robust social services support student success.
Highest performing community schools also prioritize equitable access, shared mental models, clear school performance frameworks, and integrate school hiring, onboarding, professional development and evaluation processes with community schools goals and practices.
In several of these areas, Greater Than’s implementation is significantly more robust than many community schools models. In other areas, we intend to ramp up our efforts as part of our goal of broadening and deepening engagement with Reynolds and Hillsboro schools.
This summer, Greater Than was very pleased to convene an initial meeting of select state-wide education and community leaders to strategize about how, together, we might help catalyze a community schools movement in Oregon. A key outcome of this meeting was a shared belief that a “hyper-local” approach is most powerful toward catalyzing a state-wide movement. Traditional system-change approaches in public education have largely been funder-driven, top-down, and “mass”-roots, both in the U.S. and abroad. But a recent 60-country study of such approaches by Michael Fullan (see 2025 The New Meaning of Educational Change, Sixth Edition) found them to be almost wholly unsuccessful. Thus, we aim to take an alternative local-driven, bottom-up, grass-roots approach to catalyzing community schools state-wide. Stay tuned for updates in future Greater Than e-newsletters and blogs.
To further emphasize the importance of a hyper-local approach, we thought only fitting to end this inaugural blog with the perspective of an incredible local leader in one of Greater Than’s partnership schools. Kevin Hertel is Principal at Evergreen Middle School in the Hillsboro School District, and after 3 years of working with us, proclaimed, “I really believe Greater Than’s vision for public education is the answer.”
Again, building on our successful hyper-local work over the past 16 years, Greater Than is excited to now be part of a growing state and national network of community schools who share our vision for the future of public education.
And speaking of the future…
Mark Your Calendars!
On February 25th from 8am-12pm, Greater Than, along with several strategic partners, plans to convene a statewide gathering entitled “Greater Futures: The Promise of Community Schools.” Purpose of this event is to further advance plans and actions toward building a hyper-local community schools movement Oregon. Portland area location TBD - stay tuned!
Next Blog (December 2026): On the Importance of Being Aligned
