It’s Time for True Equality in All Americas Schools
Community School as an Infrastructure of Opportunity
This inspiring conversation focuses on how we can build schools to support greater equity and better student learning outcomes
Today, we are joined by Tony Smith, former Illinois State Superintendent of Education. Previously, Smith was the Superintendent of Schools for Oakland and Emeryville, CA. Currently, he is the CEO and Founder of Whyspeople LLC, a group of “living systems engineers committed to catalyzing thriving civic communities at the intersection of public, private, and philanthropic work.”
Ron Bogle: What are some of the big challenges and opportunities that you see coming out of this period ?
Tony Smith: I think a lot of the conversation has been around the need for deeper learning. People who have been in the community schools' work, which is really where I come from, tend to believe that deeper learning resides in deeper relationships, and that the work of creating community is to engage with the community and families and all of the assets that are around a school that are part of the learning environment.
I think too few people have really taken that approach and really have narrowed the idea of school to be teaching kids how to be students, not how to learn and be members of the community. And I think that the chance we have now is to go forward, to think deeply about connectivity, about belongingness. Community schools are places of deep belonging, where we practice being in community, really, in ways that happen nowhere else like it.
RB: What is the connection between this idea of belongingness and community life? And how can it bridge the equity gap, especially in underserved communities?
TS: I think the fundamental policy issues in the United States are really grounded and rooted in white supremacy; the idea of concentrating wealth and privilege for some and concentrating poverty and stripping resources from others. So our public systems and policies have been built, in pretty much every community across the country, so schools are located in communities where they have no control over the macro policy structure. Schools can proactively interrupt that inequity or reproduce the inequity. There is no neutral.
And so, in my mind, the community school approach interrupts deep systemic inequity by becoming an opportunity infrastructure, where we connect across differences so that we can do something different. It's not just simply a white-dominant frame to close the gap, it’s really an effort to be in different relationships so new possibilities can emerge.
RB: Why don't we talk about community school in a more tangible way. What is it? What does it look like? What's happening there, and what is it doing in a community that we're not currently doing?
TS: I think the piece that gets lost sometimes is that community schools aren't just a low income or poverty-centered idea; that in affluent communities, people are organizing resources so that every child is well known, well cared for and well supported. I'm here to tell you that every child benefits from that.
The idea of a community school is really organizing around what children and their families need, and coordinating, aligning, and leveraging every resource possible, whether it's public, private, philanthropic, to meet those needs. So the idea of the public institution of school is really around defining the wellbeing of kids and their families, because that's the only institution really that's responsible for that kind of development in a community.
It's about the intention and about the way of organizing, whether it's socio-emotional learning or access to food. We did farmer's markets in Oakland. In Emeryville, we built out nursing care centers, and increased healthy food access. It is really about this notion that the heart of a healthy community is a strong school.
RB: What lessons did you learn while developing the Emeryville Center for Community Life?
TS: Starting in the mid-90’s, I was really fortunate to have a mentor in Richard Murphy, who started the Beacon Centers in New York. That experience was integral to my developing a sense of how to run systems or organizing for the needs of children. And there were others as well. I used Secretary Riley's blueprint for Schools as Centers of Community, and the work that Joy Dryfoos did is insightful when it comes to community school, as well as Paul Hill’s “It Takes a City.” So those strands all came together.
I was working for the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools at the time, and really bringing an equity lens to the work of organizing and creating a way of approaching and developing community through this idea of coordinating all of those public assets in a city for the wellbeing of kids. And that organizing work led to me to be appointed as superintendent in Emeryville, and from there we began work on the Center of Community Life.
In terms of the vision, to me, policy is really critical here. So the shared vision or mission, all of that was joint policy created by the city council and the school board, and that set the condition for its design, the way to promote the bond and all of that work. So it's the organizing, it's the community work, and then the design of Steven Bingler was really remarkably important.
RB: So what do you say to the principal or the superintendent that says, "Hey, we can't take that on. We're already doing more than we can do." How do you make this idea palatable to the school system?
TS: I think many people have had the idea that schools are responsible for a very narrow part of a young person's experience in the world, the academic content. I think that idea falls far short of the possibilities. I think about the PK-12 system as the primary workforce development organization in any community. I think about it as the primary social and public gathering place in any community. It's the place that we together say, "What do we want our young people to know and be able to do?" and that to me really is a measure of how a community thrives or doesn't.
The idea that some kids are better than other kids, this idea of the achievement gap, all these structures that reinforce hierarchization, really interrupt this deep sense of community. And to me, community is an achievement. Projects, service, competencies, all the ways of deeper and high-quality learning that people are talking about now actually reside best in full-service community schools. These schools allow us to connect all the community assets to the kids and their aspirations. And then you can hold people really accountable if you're in a positive relationship. Kids will do a ton if you expect much from them and care deeply about them.
RB: You're a person who brings change. What are the necessary ingredients to get new ideas implemented?
TS: Change is hard work. I think a lot of people start and say, "Trust me," without ever earning the trust. I kind of come at it from the other end, which is, just behave in trustworthy ways every single day, and eventually, you'll find your way to a better path. Because there have been a lot of really amazing ideas. Leonard Covello started Benjamin Franklin High School in the '30s in Harlem. Charles Stewart Mott has been funding this work since the '30s. People have been at this. The Kerner Report in 1968 talks about computer learning, personalized learning. They're talking about community schools. They're talking about interrupting poverty.
Well, it's one thing to bring an idea, it's another thing to see it actually implemented. Probably the root of the whole thing for me is that any systems change is first and foremost about personal change. And the degree to which you can expect the system to change is really measured by the depth of personal change of people who are both interfacing with and in the system. So the way of approaching that to me is really understanding what the mental models are that undergird people's approaches, what their deep belief systems are, and finding ways to talk about what people really value and care about, and then stay in that with people.
You have to listen. People's stories are really, really powerful and that takes time. But if I don't listen to you and fully understand both your hopes, aspirations and your fears, the things that have harmed or hurt you before, I'll be unlikely to be able to move through the next piece. I have to engage you. I have to say, "Hey, this is what I heard. Does that work for you?" align the different tools that we have, and then deliver to that point that you're making change happen.
The ideas are not that new, the way we approach them is different; that we have to interrupt deep inequity. We have to actually say that together, that's really the work. There are hard challenges, but I am imbued with all kinds of privilege. So my choice is how do I use that privilege to create the conditions everybody deserves? So this notion of deservingness in a system has people competing against one another, all the time, for everything, has some people feel like they deserve this and you don't. The reality is that every single kid deserves our very best. So why wouldn't we do that? And that's the work.
RB: How does the design of the learning environment play a role in your vision for where we need to go with schools?
TS: Architecture, to me, is an externalization of a cognitive process. I believe certain things will be possible in this physical space. So the thing you're designing for becomes very important. If you're designing for docile bodies and you want them to be still and receive, then you design a certain way. If you are designing for change agents, active people who want to shape the world, then you design a different way.
This notion of the purpose of the design becomes super important, and every single design has affordances and constraints. And so how explicit are you about that? And then, how flexible can you be to the learning environment shifting over time? And I would say that the ability for young people to be with each other and test ideas as they apprentice into deeper knowing, as they're working on projects, as they're developing their competencies, is essential and it's not sufficient. So the space needs to be a hub, the place of coming together, the school. That said, sitting down and being moved along the conveyor belt doesn’t provide real benefit anymore.
That idea of design as an active part of the learning and that place actually shapes what kids know and are able to do. We are tool users. There are objects that mediate our experience in the world and how we talk about that, come to understand it. When architects are deeply engaged with the educators those are the best environments, and we need to understand the purpose of learning and design for that, rather than design the space and simply assume that we can shove kids into it.
For me, the aspiration of belonging, that there are no physical markers that send biased and unconscious messages to people that you belong here or don't. If I have to navigate certain spaces that feel more formal in ways that I've never experienced. I begin from my very first exchange, feeling alienated and othered? So we should be trying to create the deepest belonging possible for kids and their families in places that say we want to learn. We want to be creating the conditions for you to think one thing one day, change your mind, grow and deepen that understanding. That's a lot of dissonance and a lot of disruption. So we should be in a pretty darn good relationship to do that. So I think about design quite a lot.
RB: What is your ultimate vision for the future of community schools in the US?
TS: I think the future of the United States depends on being in relationships across differences and our public school system is the best place to do that: to come to know and understand high quality content, to create a common floor of expectation for every single child, but have no ceiling. And that ability to have a competency-based education that connects across race, class, language, sexual identity, like all of the differences in our communities should be explored and understood in relationship to one another in the public school setting, and a design that most affords that is what we should be aspiring to. And that's a healthy democracy.
I think our public school system has done great things. It's however been largely reproductive. The chance to interrupt that and to interrupt anti-black racism and to create the kind of just world we want that's also peaceful, resides in high quality public education.