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Community support for schools is a crucial issue, especially in light of the current negativity toward public schools by the media, and severe funding limits on the national, state, and local level. It is timely then that during a recent meeting, members of the Learning First Alliance heard from Jamie Vollmer—head of Vollmer, Inc., a public education advocacy firm—who discussed ideas from his most recent book, Schools Cannot Do It Alone: Building Public Support for America’s Public Schools. He focused on the idea of local level community engagement for building school support.

Clearly educators face many challenges and have to work under numerous limitations (money, time, and demographic realities of schools, among others). But Vollmer argues there is a largely unexploited factor that can work to schools’ advantages: the malleability of local communities to accepting area educators as legitimate forces for good.

He asserts that by effectively targeting community members and informing them on how it is in their own self-interest to have good public schools, educators can gain the community support that is so vital to school issues.

To do so, Vollmer proposes that educators reach out using two tracks: a formal track that focuses on community groups, and an informal one that takes place through every day interactions. The formal track should take place “on the communities’ turf and at the communities’ convenience.” So instead of using the common model of advertising to the community to come to the school for meetings, he proposes that educators go to the community itself—that they attend local professional, cultural, social, and religious group meetings (like rotary clubs, book clubs, church meetings, local association meetings). In this way, educators make the school conversation convenient for citizens, show that they care enough about community ideas to reach out, and increase the likelihood that they will have meaningful numbers of people to speak to. Also, meetings will not be hijacked by one or two people with a long list of grievances or opinions—as school meetings often are—because group members keep the conversation in check and within their normal meeting time limits.

Then, educators can explain how every citizen’s quality of life—whether they have children in school or not—is tied to the success of public education: crime rates; desirability for new people to move to a community; work force competency; tax revenues; and others. Essentially, it’s important to convince communities that public education is good for a civil society and democracy. Educators should be sure to ask group members for their thoughts and feelings, but Vollmer cautions that educators need to be proactive in making sure these meetings do not simply turn into gripe sessions.

The informal track comprises conversations educators have in their everyday lives—at the grocery store, with friends, at community events. Vollmer emphasizes that educators and staff should try to shift what they talk about to positive aspects of schools (and save venting for family and close friends). Every school has positive elements, and if school personnel discuss these with community members, it can make the latter more appreciative of schools. Alternatively, Vollmer asserts that when teachers, for example, complain about their principal or school dynamics, it gives everyone else permission to do so as well.

By engaging in these strategies, Vollmer says schools can gain from four advantages: community understanding of how important but difficult teaching is; community trust in school faculty; community permission to engage in new models of education; and ultimately community support.

In sum, while many times education groups try to engage the top level of government to effect change, Vollmer advocates focusing more than current efforts do on effecting transformation at the local level.