Full-Service Schools Roundtable

Formed in 2000, the Full-Service Schools Roundtable was the first city coalition dedicated to the expansion of Boston’s successful full-service school initiatives—Boston Community Learning Centers, Gardner Extended Services School, Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, Lucy Stone Initiative and Boston Connects. The Full-service Schools Roundtable is an organization working to collaborate with the Boston Public School system and its community, public and private sector partners to use multiple approaches to bring full-service schooling to scale in Boston such as:

• Providing support, training and technical assistance to schools and community agencies interested in advancing along the continuum of creating a full-service school
• Developing and disseminating a toolkit of resources designed to help schools partner with community agencies, funders and others
• Convening school site coordinators to share problems, strategies and solutions.
• Creating a model that demonstrates how to leverage local, state, federal, and private resources to support increased delivery of services to children and families.

A full-service school is a place where:

• Families can get the help they need —health, mental health and social services—to support their children.
• The school building is open before and after school, in the evenings, on weekends and during the summer.
• One or more community- based agencies partner with the school.
• Teachers, parents, students and community partners are accountable for outcomes.

The driving force behind full-service schools is that children can learn effectively only when they are ready to learn. And readiness to learn comes only when emotional, physical, and psychological distress are at manageable levels. Many school children, however, face numerous economic or emotional stressors, including family instability, limited access to quality health care and mental health services, unsafe neighborhoods, and language or cultural barriers.

The Full-Service Schools Roundtable, now officially a part of the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, will continue its work consulting with school systems to plan for more robust service delivery and innovative partnership models to help students achieve their true potential.

Through a combination of management tools, like AIP’s PartnerTrax platform, and expertise on public-private partnerships in a school setting we want to aid school systems looking to maximize the effectiveness and scope of their portfolio of services.