Community Schools are neighborhood public schools where parents, educators, and community partners work together to expand the support available to families and create meaningful experiences for students.

The K-12 building with 317 students in the Genesee School District has been operating as a community school since the start of the 2023 academic year. It’s been everything that superintendent Dr. Wendy Moore was hoping for when the rural Latah County district received a grant from the Idaho Coalition for Community Schools (ICCS) to hire a coordinator and begin operating as a community school. The Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Heath is a major supporter of the coalition’s collaborative fund that offers grants to support the implementation of Community Schools strategy.

Dr. Wendy Moore

“We headed down that path, and honestly, it sort of snowballed,” Moore said. “I can’t believe where we are after a little more than just one year.”

The school now has a host of integrated student supports, including:

  • Community Closet that provides students with clothes, shoes and other necessities, including snacks or meals
  • Vision screenings that offer students free eye exams and glasses, if needed
  • A mentorship program for middle school students
  • Sports physicals for students
  • Early education and childcare programs

Moore and the school district didn’t set out to become a community school. It happened organically in the process of trying to do what’s best for the students at the school.

“As a rural school, we’re always looking for resources for students,” Moore said. “And we were seeing more and more students coming into our district with needs outside of school. Genesee is very much a rural district, and even though we do sit between Moscow and Lewiston, our resources are very limited here in town.”

One of the community partners at the Trunk or Treat event at the school.

Moore toured several community schools in the state and saw the difference they were making in places that resonated with her. That led to the district exploring becoming a Community School.

“We were amazed with what they were being able to offer their communities that were similar to Genesee,” she said.

The district took part in a learning series funded by the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health led by the National Coalition for Community Schools. The subsequent ICCS grant allowed Genesee to hire Chandra Smith as its community school coordinator. The primary role of a coordinator is to determine the needs of the school and community, then work to address them. That process starts with thorough community engagement and a needs assessment.

Chandra Smith

“I became known as the survey lady for a while in the community,” Smith said. “I went to the grocery store, there was a lot of knocking on doors. I went to the senior center and read out the survey about 100 times to our senior community members to make sure that we got a good idea of what the community wanted. I wanted to make sure that everybody’s voices were really highlighted.

“Everything that we’ve done has been based on that assessment, and I’ve gotten to see the impact that it makes on our students and their families.”

A poster thanks all of the participants at the Trunk or Treat event.

While the student supports have been impactful, there’s been another development that’s positively impacted the district.

“Getting families involved in school has tended to go in a downward trend,” Moore said. “The community outreach and just trying to get the community engaged has been huge for us. We rely on our community a lot for support in our district. It’s been a huge way of communicating with our community.”

The community engagement isn’t just checking a box, either. Community input is what sold Moore on the Community Schools model.

“The whole conversation shifted with the community members at the table,” she said. “We heard ‘we need daycare, we need resources.’ We found all these things that families needed that we just didn’t have in our small community.”

Now the district plans events at the school for families, not just students.

“We really wanted to focus on family engagement and family bonding,” Smith said. “We want to make the school a place for families to come. We want the school to be a place to come with their children. We’re so rural that there isn’t a movie theater or a place to just come and do a craft night.”

Genesee will continue building its community school. The district is attempting to find a behavioral health counselor to provide those services to students in need via the Foundation’s Healthy Minds Partnership program that helps districts offer school-located behavioral health services. A few other out-of-school programs are in the works.

“It’s been well worth every minute that we have invested in this,” Moore said. “I really encourage superintendents, especially if they’re in a rural district, to look at this. It has been amazing to me how many opportunities and people that are out there willing to support initiatives like this. It’s just a matter of asking and finding out what your community wants and needs. This has been a huge thing in our community and our district. We really feel we are meeting those basic needs of our kids and we’re going to reap multiple benefits from it.”