In California, the movement for Community Schools has been taking shape for decades across universities, school districts, nonprofits, workforce organizations, and city agencies through partnerships grounded in relationships, sustainability, and a shared belief that young people deserve more than fragmented systems. In recent years, momentum for Community Schools has only increased, as the strategy provides solutions to challenges for students and families across the state. From San Francisco, Los Banos, Los Angeles, to Long Beach, leaders across California describe the same challenge: schools cannot do this work alone. They also describe the same opportunity: when educators, community partners, families, researchers, and local leaders come together around young people, transformation becomes possible.
For more than a decade, the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL), home to the Coalition for Community Schools (CCS), has partnered with California leaders to strengthen that transformation. Through coaching, convenings, national networks, and cross-sector partnerships, IEL has helped connect California practitioners to a broader national movement while also learning from and elevating the innovative work happening across the state. IEL also partners with local Community-Based Organizations to support youth career-focused mentoring.
As leaders gather in Long Beach for IEL’s 2026 National Community Schools and Family Engagement Conference (CSxFE26), California partners are reflecting on the impact of these relationships and on what it means to build sustainable systems that center students, families, and communities.
Advancing University-Assisted Community Schools Through Research and Partnership
One theme emerged repeatedly in conversations with California partners: the importance of feeling connected to something larger than a single district, organization, or initiative. For Dr. Marisa Saunders, Associate Director for Research at The University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Community Schooling, that connection became especially important as California launched its historic statewide investment in Community Schools. The partnership between UCLA and IEL deepened in 2020 during preparations for the Community Schools and Family Engagement Conference in Los Angeles. Even after the pandemic postponed the conference, the collaboration continued to grow. UCLA leaders partnered with IEL and the Coalition for Community Schools to deepen national connections, exchange ideas with peers across the country, and contribute California’s emerging lessons to the broader Community Schools field.
“The most important support we get from IEL’s Coalition is feeling as though we’re part of a national movement,” Saunders said. “Our work in California is connected to and reinforced by efforts across the country.”
That sense of national connection has helped shape California’s evolving approach to University-Assisted Community Schools (UACS), which emphasizes partnerships between higher education institutions and local school systems to support long-term implementation, sustainability, continuous learning, and community engagement.
Through partnerships and national learning networks facilitated by IEL, UCLA leaders connected with practitioners and researchers across the country, sharing California’s experiences while learning from the work unfolding in other communities. Wendy Salcedo-Fierro, Partnership Lead at UCLA’s Center for Community Schooling and a former Lead Teacher at the UCLA Community School, described the value of building bridges across geography so educators and Community Schools leaders could learn from one another’s successes and challenges.
The partnership has also expanded into storytelling and field-building efforts led by UCLA’s Center for Community Schooling. Through the Journal of Community Schooling, the UCLA team has created an important platform that elevates research, practice, and place-based stories about Community Schools from across the country. The journal’s articles and case studies are frequently used by IEL and Coalition for Community Schools staff as evidence of impact and best practices to inform local communities and partners nationwide. Christa Rowland, Regional Director for the Coalition for Community Schools at IEL, serves on the journal’s editorial board alongside UCLA leaders and practitioners from across the field, providing strategic input and editorial support as part of the journal’s broader collaborative network.
While each California partnership looks different, leaders consistently described IEL’s role as helping organizations move from short-term programming toward long-term systems building. At UCLA, national partnerships and shared learning opportunities through IEL reinforced a statewide focus on sustainability, teaching and learning, and the role universities can play in strengthening Community Schools infrastructure across California. “One of the things that we really appreciated about our connection with the Coalition [IEL] is the focus on teaching and learning,” Saunders said.
Over time, UCLA has become a trusted national contributor within the Community Schools movement, generously sharing its expertise, research, and lessons learned with communities across the country. UCLA leaders frequently contribute to IEL webinars, peer learning networks, and national convenings, helping practitioners and systems leaders strengthen Community Schools strategies in their local contexts. Research practice partnerships and national convenings have created opportunities for California leaders not only to learn from peers across the country but also to share California’s experiences and emerging best practices with the broader field.
Together, these partnerships reflect a growing recognition that sustaining Community Schools requires more than funding alone. It requires networks for learning, research partnerships, shared leadership, and spaces where practitioners can collectively imagine what equitable systems could become.
Building Sustainable Systems in Local Communities
While statewide partnerships help shape the broader movement, Community Schools ultimately take root within local systems and communities.
In the Los Banos Unified School District, leaders are working to intentionally and sustainably build those systems. Dr. Heather Wheeler, Director of Community Schools, first connected with IEL and Coalition for Community Schools leaders at the CSxFE25 conference in Minneapolis while building a brand-new Community Schools team in her district.
“Nothing’s harder than feeling like you’re all alone when you’re trying to do innovative work,” Dr. Wheeler said. “To know that other people have done it successfully is heartening.”
At the time, Los Banos was focused not only on implementation but also on ensuring the work could last well beyond California’s current grant cycle. Through coaching, leadership development, professional learning, and peer exchanges, IEL worked alongside district leaders to strengthen relationships between principals, Community School Coordinators, and school site teams. Those efforts helped district leaders think beyond launching programs toward building systems that could sustain collaboration and partnership over time.
“The biggest shift is really focusing on long-term, not just the short-term,” Wheeler explained. “They’re [IEL] helping me create that long-term sustainability plan.”
That same emphasis on connection and systems leadership has shaped Dr. Carol Hill’s decades-long work in San Francisco. Dr. Hill (Manager of Community Schools Initiatives at San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families) first connected with IEL in 2009 while beginning Community Schools work in California. At the time, opportunities for Community School practitioners on the West Coast to connect nationally were limited.
Over the years, Dr. Hill became deeply involved in IEL’s national Community Schools leadership networks, including early efforts to strengthen leadership opportunities for Community School Coordinators. Dr. Hill served as a co-chair of the Coalition’s Community School Coordinator Network and now co-leads the Community School Leadership Network (CSLN). Dr. Hill has generously contributed her time and expertise to spreading San Francisco’s best practices nationwide. She is frequently featured as a speaker and expert contributor in IEL’s shared learning spaces. Through IEL convenings and national networks, practitioners from across the country, including leaders from California, shared strategies, troubleshooted challenges together, and collectively shaped leadership within the field.
Dr. Hill described national networks and convenings as especially important because Community Schools work “can be so isolating,” particularly for leaders trying to build new systems and navigate change within their own communities. More recently, IEL leaders supported convenings in San Francisco that brought together school board members, district officials, community organizations, and city agencies to discuss the broader vision and systems-level potential of Community Schools work.
“It was really useful… helping people see that this is a much broader strategy than you may think,” Hill recalled.
Across both Los Banos and San Francisco, IEL’s role was described not simply as technical assistance, but as connective infrastructure: bringing together coaching, leadership development, convening, and national learning networks to help local communities strengthen implementation and sustainability over time.
Expanding Opportunity for Young People and Communities
California leaders also emphasized that strong Community Schools systems must connect students and families to broader pathways of opportunity. In South Los Angeles, PVJOBS has partnered with IEL since 2014 to support young people navigating disconnection, reentry, and workforce transitions. At the time, the organization primarily served adults returning from incarceration, but staff increasingly saw younger people arriving at their doors without stable support, educational pathways, or employment opportunities.
Through partnership with IEL and its Right Turn model, PVJOBS expanded into youth and young adult workforce development and reentry services. Over time, the organization strengthened partnerships with the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Probation Department while continuing to grow its youth workforce programming.
Mary Taylor, Executive Director of PVJOBS, described the partnership as transformational, not only because of the funding opportunities IEL helped secure, but because of the network and technical assistance that accompanied the work. Through IEL, organizations across the country shared best practices, troubleshooted challenges together, and strengthened programming collectively.
Taylor also shared a youth success story that stays with her to this day: A young man named Eduardo entered the Right Turn program in 2014, looking for direction and opportunity. More than a decade later, he is a union cement mason, homeowner, and mentor who remains connected to PVJOBS and shares updates on his life. “He bought a house… he’s stable… he journeyed out,” Taylor said, reflecting on Eduardo’s transformation from participant to thriving professional. Stories like Eduardo’s reinforce what many California leaders described throughout the interviews: sustainable Community Schools work depends on long-term relationships, community partnerships, and systems that remain accessible to young people long after a grant cycle ends.
Looking Ahead to CSxFE26 in Long Beach
This May, IEL’s many California partners will gather in Long Beach, California, for CSxFE26. The conference represents more than an annual convening. For California partners, it reflects years of relationship-building, shared learning, and collective leadership across the Community Schools movement.
For some, the conference has long been a space where practitioners find visibility and belonging. For others, it is an opportunity to connect emerging Community Schools teams with national peers and proven practices. For university researchers, district leaders, and community-based organizations alike, the gathering offers an opportunity to deepen conversations about sustainability, equity, teaching and learning, and community partnerships.
Across California, local leaders, practitioners, researchers, and community organizations are strengthening systems for student success through collaboration, shared learning, and sustained partnership. Throughout this work, IEL has helped foster national connections, elevate local expertise, and create opportunities for communities to learn from one another. Together, these relationships reflect a shared commitment to building sustainable, community-rooted systems that support young people and families.
As attendees gather in Long Beach, they will celebrate how far the movement has come and continue building what comes next: a future where Community Schools are not viewed as temporary programs but as a long-term strategy for educational equity, community well-being, and student success nationwide.
Sources: Interview transcripts with California partners conducted by Dr. Emily Cheng, Senior Data Analyst, IEL.