Partnering with Communities - Research and Resources

Passionate about improving behavioral health services for children and families, Heather Simonich currently serves as an Operations Director for Nexus-PATH Family Healing in Fargo, North Dakota. Heather has a deep belief that when children and families have access to timely and effective services, they can overcome almost any challenge that lies before them.

By leveraging strategic and aligned community partnerships, schools can ensure students receive consistent SEL supports, increase access to a range of community services, and expand the professional learning opportunities for SEL.

Leaders from America's Promise community partners describe why community, school, and family partnerships are critical to youth success.

This video shows how 6 Connecticut school districts are taking unique approaches to family, school and community partnerships in order to increase student engagement and improve student outcomes.

This brief from MDRC first describes what school-community partnerships are and the evidence on whether partnerships can promote students’ social and emotional well-being and their academic success. It further reflects on how districts and schools can expand these partnerships to assist school transformation at three levels—the program level, the staff level.

This collection of resources from the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments contains resources on family and community engagement with schools to support children in PreK through Elementary.

This guide from the XQ Institute focuses on High School or Secondary education and explores how to attract and engage community partners.

This resource from CASEL will help you leverage strategic and aligned community partnerships that ensure students receive consistent SEL supports, increase access to a broad range of community services, and expand the professional learning opportunities for SEL.

This collection of resources from Edutopia will help you learn and share ideas about how to engage caring individuals, organizations, and businesses to help schools with resources, mentors, internships, and more.

This guide share best practices and methods for Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) interested in supporting their strategies with research that combines community knowledge with Healthy City technology. Toward this aim, we have developed the Community Research Lab Toolbox.

The Community Tool Box provides information and strategies about how to assess community needs and resources. A separate toolkit about Assessing Community Needs and Resources can be found here.

In this article, Beaulieu argues in favor of asset mapping and provides a 5 step model for mapping a community's assets.

Our OER LibGuide includes open access data and statistics resources, including educational statistics, demographic information, and statistical data by state.