What community schools can teach every sector about working together

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Dozens of schools across the Wasatch Front now carry the designation “community school,” a strategy that has drawn national attention from organizations like the Brookings Institution and StriveTogether.  

At first glance, community schools can feel almost self-evident. The idea starts with the observation that children don’t leave the rest of their lives at the schoolhouse door. Hunger, housing, physical health, mental health, and family stability all shape what happens once a child sits down to learn. 

Community schools then respond by bringing many of the people and services that already exist to support children and families into a place they already know and trust. Food pantries, health clinics, family resource centers, after-school programs, language classes, and workforce training become easier to access because they’re woven into the life of the school. 

When thinking about community schools, it’s easy to focus on the services they provide. They are, after all, the most visible part of the model. But the services aren’t what make community schools distinctive. Perhaps the more interesting innovation lies in the way they organize people around a shared outcome—a lesson with implications far beyond education. 

Where Schools End and Communities Begin 

Rich Nye has spent more than twenty-five years in education—as a teacher, superintendent, deputy superintendent, and now senior advisor for education to Utah’s Governor Cox. During that time, he’s watched schools quietly inherit responsibilities that once belonged to entire communities. 

“Public education has generally been looked at as the sector that should solve societal ills,” he said. “I can’t emphasize enough that that’s not the case. Schools can’t solve complex community issues by teaching English, math, and science.”  

Community schools are built around that acknowledgment. Rather than asking schools to become healthcare providers, housing organizations, food banks, or social service agencies, they ask a different question: How can the people already doing that work organize around one of the few places nearly every family already knows? 

For Luciano Marzulli, Community Schools Director for Promise Partnership Utah, that’s the defining feature of the model. “Community schools are a strategy built around the school as a shared point of connection,” he said. “The idea is that a community school is the hub of a community. Rather than creating a new institution, community schools strengthen the connections among institutions that already exist and create greater capacity for communities to solve problems together.” 

That shift, Rich believes, requires something that doesn’t often receive much attention: humility. 

“It can feel a little vulnerable sometimes for schools to say, ‘We need help,'” he said.  

Community schools normalize that vulnerability. Rather than measuring a school’s strength by how much it can do on its own, they measure it by how effectively it can bring together the people already working on behalf of children. 

The Work Between Institutions 

For Rich, community schools are less an education strategy than a lesson in systems thinking. He described how, for decades, communities have become increasingly specialized —schools educate, hospitals provide healthcare, employers create jobs, housing organizations stabilize families, and so on.  

The challenge is that people don’t experience those systems one at a time. 

“When it comes to cross-sector work,” Rich said, “you do see hyperspecialization or siloing.” Organizations become highly capable within their own domains, “but when they occur in isolation of others trying to do very similar things, there’s loss of efficiency.” Increasingly, he sees “more partnership approaches” emerging as communities work to align organizations around shared outcomes rather than parallel efforts.  

Community schools don’t ask those organizations to become something they’re not; schools remain schools, hospitals remain hospitals, housing organizations remain housing organizations. The shift is that each contributes what it does best while working toward the same outcome. The innovation is giving them a common place to do their work, together. 

Today, Rich sees that same pattern emerging across sectors. He described how healthcare providers are working more closely with employers to strengthen workforce pipelines. Businesses are investing in paid apprenticeships that connect students to meaningful careers while partnering with colleges to create pathways into degrees and credentials. Workforce agencies, higher education, and industry are designing those pathways together rather than independently.  

The pattern is the same. Organizations remain experts in their own fields while becoming more intentional about where those fields intersect. 

Community schools exemplify this idea. As Luciano sees it, that’s why the strategy matters beyond education. Community schools provide a way to strengthen a community’s capacity to solve problems together.  

“The title isn’t really the most important part,” Luciano said. “There are schools doing this work that wouldn’t even call themselves community schools. What’s important is the shared vision. Once people have a common language for organizing around children, they stop thinking about programs and start thinking about partnership.” 

At first glance, community schools look like schools that do more. In reality, they offer a bigger lesson for how communities can do more, together. 

Written by Danielle LeCourt, Partnership Communications and Narrative Director