young people, families, and the broader
community (Coalition for Community
Schools, 2000; Johanek & Puckett,
2007). Typically, community schools
work with a coordinator to ensure that
all students have health, dental, and
mental-health services. Participants in
the effort include community activists;
businesspeople; professionals (social
workers, nurses, physicians, and so on);
and college students and faculty.
Public schools are particularly well
suited to function as neighborhood
centers, or hubs, around which to generate local partnerships. When they play
that innovative role, schools function
as community institutions par excellence, providing a decentralized, democratic, community-based response to
rapidly changing community problems
(Benson, Harkavy, & Puckett, 2007).
Bringing the Two
Partners Together
For the last 15 years, we at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) have
been working to develop democratic,
respectful, mutually beneficial partnerships with our neighboring West
Philadelphia schools and communities.
The Netter Center for Community Partnerships, working with Penn faculty,
pursues this goal through the development of university-assisted community
schools.
The university-assisted community
school model extends and updates
John Dewey’s theory that to function
as a genuine community center, the
neighborhood school requires additional human resources and support.
Universities constitute a strategic source
of the broad-based, comprehensive,
sustained support that community
schools need (Benson, Harkavy, &
Puckett, 2007).
Penn’s university-assisted com-
munity schools help educate, engage,
empower, and serve all members of
the community. A broad range of uni-
versity resources support these schools,
including site-based coordinators who
are on the staff of the Netter Center.
In 2009–10, approximately 2,000
Penn students worked in eight West
Philadelphia community schools—445
student interns, work-study students,
and student volunteers, plus 1,575
undergraduate and graduate university
students who took academically based
community service courses that link
service in the community to teaching,
learning, and research. Some of the
academic supports the Netter Center
provides include
n Academic enrichment programs,
including programs in the STEM
disciplines (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Math). Penn under-
graduate students—supervised by
two professional STEM educators—
and Penn students enrolled in one
of our 12 STEM-based community
service courses, provide hands-on
and inquiry-based learning in the
classroom. These programs fill a
pressing need in West Philadelphia
schools, where learning is predomi-
nately from the textbook and science
labs are mostly nonexistent.
arts instruction.
n Youth development programs that
engage students as community problem
solvers in such areas as health and
nutrition.
n College access and career
development programs. For example,
more than 125 high school students
are offered paid internships on the uni-
versity campus, in Penn’s hospitals, and
in local businesses.
n Six weeks of summer programming
for more than 600 K– 12 students.
The university partnership also seeks
to meet the needs of students’ families.
photo by Jamie tomczuk
Netter Center staff members hold
monthly parent meetings at school sites
to share information about students’
progress and provide guest speakers
on such topics as parenting skills and
homework. School site coordinators
support various other school efforts to
engage parents; for example, a recently
opened parent resource center at one
high school offers a variety of programs
in such areas as health and fitness,
financial literacy, healthy cooking, and
community service.
A particularly compelling example of
a university-assisted community school
program is the health center located in