The vision is that community schools provide year-round comprehensive resources—addressing learning, health, safety, and social development—to students, their families, and their communities. Baltimore is well on the way to realizing this vision in more than one-quarter of its public schools under the Community and School Engagement Strategy.
Up to this point, local investments have focused heavily on improving our public schools, but emerging research points to a broad and growing “opportunity gap” that extends far beyond the school day and is a major contributor to gaps in achievement between low-income students and their more affluent peers.
Differential access to summer learning opportunities in the elementary and middle school years explains a substantial part of today’s achievement gap. Summer is a time when youth can engage in learning beyond the school walls and connect
