James O’Meara: Community Schools

 I think for anyone that’s listening, that’s been involved in the community schools movement. You see similarities away straight away. That’s what’s really guiding the idea, especially for an institution like TAMIU, which is based in the community for the community, the whole notion of a community school fits really, really nicely. And so there’s policies in place in terms of who would constitute the governing board. So up until recently, we’d have once the advisory board meetings and that was really reporting out about all the wonderful things we’ve been doing. There’s lots of things to celebrate. There wasn’t really a true dialog. So the structures we need to put in place now, we’ve really been informed by the concept of taming where we meet often and meet with a reed with an expectation to understand. And so getting the people around the table that can give the perspectives we need to clearly identified the needs of that community. The big challenges we have at the moment. Around the financial piece is, again, you’ve heard about the financial challenge of some of our students, how you planned as we move to something like a yearlong residency model. How do we how do we create the conditions for someone to actually do that? And again, we need to work in partnership with the districts who might be able to put into structures. Internship opportunities or financial incentives linked to commitment that could represent scholarships to mitigate those structures. And so we’re just starting to talk about that piece and also how to employ district personnel as our teacher educators. In terms of the. Realization of this scaling. I think you start small. So we’re saying with one District one program. That’s our elementary program, once we work that, then we set it up to the next program, which will be a secondary ED and then also then to the principal preparation. It’s a great group that’s working with the principles of the allies of the right to stay, and their goal is for every vacancy to applicants. Now, what if we could create the situation in terms of what are the people, the processes, the technology and the financial side that could ensure this permaculture of two teachers for every vacancy?

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