Key Feature of Community Schools - Openness

One of the key characteristics of a community school is that it is not closed and insular, but "open" to the public and the community. This notion of 'openness' isn't simply rhetorical - it influences classroom practice, administrative process and the design of the school itself.

Examples include:

• the absence of fences or walls keeping students in and the public out;

• retention or creation of public rights of way passing through the school site (in some cases the through the building itself)
  

• co-locating public services, i.e., shops, libraries, leisure facilities, on campus;

• building on central rather than peripheral sites, i.e. adjacent to a large public field;

• open plan teaching areas.

However, simply being "open" is not the ultimate aim of a community school. The ultimate aim is for the school to "fuse with the community" and to "obliterate the boundary between school and community" by turning "the community into a school and the school into a community."

Next: Key Feature of Community Schools - Democratization

Source: Community Schools