Contact School District of La Crosse
807 East Avenue South
La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601
(608) 789-7600
https://www.lacrosseschools.org/

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This is Randy Nelson and this is an edition of extra innings as a retiring superintendent of schools. Many things run across my mind when I reflect on 37 years of education, what's happened in those 37 years. What we been doing in our schools and even what's on the horizon to help facilitate the discussion. I've enlisted the assistance of Mr. Bob Schmidt past radio talkshow host a parent and a friend. Take one of the things that is change. I think a lot since my kids were little to now is is community schools. We tend to have more community schools than we did 15 years ago. One could argue that our community schools have always been committed to schools in that they serve neighborhoods. We believe that neighborhood schools are really important part of who we are but a community school model intensifies what it means to be a neighborhood school and that neighborhood school really sees that's this is where we bring our children love our school whatever staff we love everything that happens inside of our school for involving the PTO, etc. but the community school model is one that actually intensifies it by creating more connections, not just with parents and not just of students but with organizations in that particular neighborhood whether those would be churches or where they would be be businesses creating opportunities for many mentorships resources to come in to play bring them thinking in a place where, especially parents of children who maybe don't feel either welcome or comfortable in other settings can come to their local community school and they can be welcome there, and there are resources there for that to support them, etc. so this is the notion of community school. I'm real proud that how I think were in our third year of community school operations, both at Northside elementary school and also at Hamilton elementary school. So, explain the difference between a neighborhood school and community school that so that the neighborhood school is really about geographic location right, but a community school takes the geographic location and says what does this neighborhood have to offer the school and how can we bring it into the school. For instance, in one of the things we talked about before is in a community school model perhaps partnering with a laundromat or perhaps in bringing in for instance a washer and dryer so that the student a who may not have had an opportunity to have their clothes washed for several days. They can be washed at school. We can take care that we can support that we can support the parent we can support the students. We also talked about making sure that in a community school that we have. For instance, classroom space for adult learning so that parents who, for instance, would like to have a class running there that me know maybe through a partnership with one of our higher Ed agencies Western or Viterbo or UW well that actually in an adult course can be run right there make minutes parenting course. Maybe it's a course on marketing. Maybe it's a corrupt business course we want to turn out to be a hub where that particular parent or any parent can send this is my school and on a drop in here. Both of those schools have a pretty significant opportunity to support a lot of the families in the schools and on the weekends it's that's not unusual for students to be filling up bags of groceries for some of the students in their schools to I need some food over the weekend and so this hub. This opportunity really expands on that particular model. And of course one of the things we want to make sure someplace is an opportunity for our local medical agencies to have an exam room or have a place where students if necessary, and/or parents and people from the neighborhood might be able to once a week be able to see a doctor and come in and see a doctor if they are not feeling well and or an opportunity for a dental chair to be there so that a student could have a quick exam. I'm guessing eyeglasses hearing all that stuff probably titrated. I can totally see great advantage of having community schools. I don't know if our community knows that we have this here know that they really been developing and so couple of years ago we brought the programs and we actually hired about what's called a community schools coordinator and it's really been that person's job over the last couple of years to start cultivating relationships and start making know some of these things happen. I think what's really cool about the community schools model is that we've got Hamilton and we have Northside right now is our community schools. There could be more in the future, but we have those two schools and a well they are community schools there community school programming does not have to look the same. It's not the standardized approach to this. It really is intended to be one that's reflective of what the community in the neighborhood largest thing. For instance at Hamilton we went through the process there of having several meetings with community members and with members in that particular neighborhood what's needed here at the Hamilton school. How can the schools serve to support you better in some of the needs that you have as parents, we received a treasure trove of ideas that actually were starting to bring into play and part of it was to make it a community school provides someone there to provide supports that person who's there is typically one that has other connections in the community. It doesn't need to be a social worker, but is able to support a family who might need a year this family. You might need something else and it's just it's another touching point for families and for parents who need supports along the way. This is part of the role of the community, school, community school is to make sure that we're doing things that the tenant level is much as we can. The playing field so that when that student comes to school. That student knows my mom my dad my guardians however are welcome in this particular school. I'm welcome in this particular school. This is my place. I love this place. I'm learning these things and were backfilling with experiences along the way. So it's a very complex thing that goes on with these and were just in the starting phases of our community schools, but I am really excited about what the future holds for the committee to schools and how they can really really become the hubs of those neighborhoods and go further than that. Thanks, Randy. I'm looking forward to our next extraneous conversation retiring superintendent of schools Randy Nelson is excavating time as a podcast for hire.com