Report: integrate schools with communities

Improves education, health

Steve Hawley, Apr 15, 10.

A new report from the National Trust for Historic Preservation says that integrating schools with their surrounding communities provides numerous benefits, including educational improvements, better public health, reduced travel times, lowered construction and operating costs, and increased property values.

The report finds that community-based schools tend to have smaller student bodies, which leads to higher attendance and graduation rates and increased participation in extracurricular activities. In addition, many students walk to school, reducing vehicle emissions, saving on bus costs, and improving health and physical fitness. Architect Ann Daigle, quoted in the National Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog, says that the biggest benefit of walking to school is increasing students’ self-reliance.

Community-based schools also increase local property values and encourages investment in the neighborhood, which ensures a steady tax base to support the school. School facilities are also used by other local residents once school is over, which increases community support and provides more chances for interaction between students, parents, and teachers.

Building schools far away, on the other hand, increases the number of cars on the road, limits physical activity opportunities, decreases property values and the local tax base, and weakens ties to the community.

The report states:

Community-centered schools do not happen by accident. They are part of a community vision and plan that is responsive to educational, environmental, transportation, health, community, and fiscal requirements.

To encourage community-based schools, it says that states must remove minimum acreage requirements, which make it difficult if not impossible to build schools in dense neighborhoods. States must also remove minimum school size requirements, which can force smaller neighborhood schools to close and increases the size of the school district. In addition, cities and states should encourage redevelopment of existing buildings rather than new school construction, and they should increase cooperation between school districts and various planning agencies.

The report is a follow-up to a 2002 report entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School.”

Full report: Helping Johnny Walk to School (pdf, 1.1 mb)
2002 report: Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School (pdf, 368 kb)

(Photo credit: National Center for Safe Routes to School)