Helping Washington Students Since 1991
Communities In Schools began operating in Washington in 1991 at the urging of Boeing, Costco, and other Washington state employers. Their concern developed in an atmosphere where schools were expected to fulfill multiple roles—as service providers, coordinators, interventionists—that threatened to overwhelm their capacity to teach.
Business and education leaders were impressed with the comprehensive and coordinated strategy that Communities In Schools brought to schools in other parts of the country by addressing the immediate needs of students while freeing teachers to teach.
Today, twelve Communities In Schools affiliates operate in Washington and help more than 46,000 students each year.
Thirty-five Years of Grassroots Organization
In the 1960s, on the streets of New York City, youth worker Bill Milliken and his colleagues launched a series of nontraditional “street academies,” with backing from major corporations like Union Carbide and American Express. Young people who had already dropped out of school were able to return, complete their education and, in most cases, go on to college.
In 1977, Milliken and his colleagues decided to work inside the school system, and Communities In Schools (then called Cities In Schools) was born. The idea was to develop a safety net so underserved youth could get the assistance they needed to stay in school. The Communities In Schools founders realized that troubled young people and their families had difficulty negotiating their way through a maze of public and private services, all located in different places and following different rules. They decided to bring these community resources inside a public school building, where they are accessible, coordinated and accountable.
The fledgling organization started out strong, as newly elected President Jimmy Carter, a supporter of the Communities In Schools prototype during his term as Georgia governor, identified federal funds to support the organization's expansion. Soon Communities In Schools was serving nearly 3,000 students in three cities: Atlanta, Indianapolis and New York.
Changes Along the Way
Between 1977 and 1983, local Communities In Schools efforts were funded by the national office. As Communities In Schools continued to expand, it became clear that true community-building required local ownership and funding sources. Each community needed to assess its own problems and strengths and craft individual solutions. Thus, from then on, it was determined that every Communities In Schools affiliate would be independently incorporated, with the national office providing training, support and the basic model.
Communities In Schools' cost-effective method of rallying the community to deliver existing services at the school site became a model for school-community collaboration. Every presidential administration since the Carter administration in 1977 has provided support to Communities In Schools—including the innovative, 10-year “Partnership Plan” among the departments of Justice, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that began in 1985.
Coming of Age
By the mid-1990s, it was clear that the Communities In Schools model was gaining in support and recognition. In response to its expansion and to acknowledge its commitment to creating community, Cities In Schools changed its name to Communities In Schools in 1996.
Today Communities In Schools is widely known as the pioneer of the “community school” concept—a vision of schools as vital centers for the entire community, and a delivery point for services and resources that would otherwise be scattered far and wide, uncoordinated and unaccountable. Worth magazine named Communities In Schools one of the “top 100 nonprofits most likely to save the world” in both 2001 and 2002. Worth’s criteria for selection (out of a field of 819,000 registered U.S. charities) were “skill, innovation, effectiveness and strategic insight.”
In 2004, Communities In Schools underwent an evolution in its executive leadership. After more than 25 years as operational leader of the organization, Communities In Schools founder Bill Milliken transitioned to a new role as vice chairman to the national board of directors, allowing him to focus full-time on developing individual donors. Daniel J. Cardinali assumed the position of national president.
