United Community Schools

Our Mission:

United Community Schools aims to improve student achievement by meeting the health, safety and social service needs of students, parents and communities. It does this by facilitating partnerships between schools and non-profits, local businesses and non-governmental organizations, as well as with government agencies. These agencies, in turn, provide vital services to public schools, making each building a hub in the community.

Our Purpose: 

United Community Schools aims to improve student achievement by meeting the health, safety and social service needs of students, parents and communities. It does this by facilitating partnerships between schools and non-profits, local businesses and non-governmental organizations, as well as with government agencies. These organizations, in turn, provide vital services to public schools, making each building a hub in the community.

The keys to our success:

• Holistically addressing a student’s needs removes barriers to learning and makes it easier for students to succeed.
• Embedding services in public school buildings makes more services immediately available and makes access to them more convenient for students and the community.
• Seamlessly integrating services into a school’s daily operations minimizes the disruption to the day-to-day life of students and families receiving services.
• Engaging local businesses and community-based organizations ensures that the entire community is involved and keeps important resources in the neighborhood.
• Tracking program enrollment and success provides evidence that services are being delivered and making an impact

Who we are: 

United Community Schools was established in 2012 by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to improve student achievement in low-performing schools serving students with high needs and their families and community by transforming these schools into community hubs. In that time, UCS has made important progress in supporting New York City’s Public Schools, currently partnering with 31 schools in all five boroughs serving 20,000 + students.

Our Services: 

We create collaborative school communities that give voice to educators, parents and community members together with the school administration exemplify our community learning schools. In our model, the Community School Director (CSD) serves as the key point person responsible for integrating the programs and services and managing the partnerships within each community learning school.

CSDs conduct an annual needs assessment, with the aim of strategically aligning programs and services to meet the particular needs of their school community. While the central UCS team vets candidates for these positions, each school team interviews and selects its own CSD, reinforcing an authentic school-based point of view.

Each school forms its own advisory board of internal and external stakeholders to serve as the decision-making body for the UCS initiative. The advisory board crafts the school’s vision and is accountable for executing that plan. Consistency throughout the implementation of the community school model is a crucial element it’s success. In addition, the UFT’s support brings resources, mentoring and best practices to our Community Learning Schools. Nine of our schools have UFT Teacher Centers operating in their buildings, to provide quality, on-site, relevant professional development. Our UCS central support staff helps schools build internal capacity to turn their vision into reality. Two of the UCS central support staff are credentialed Teacher Center staff developers available to help all UCS schools.

Want to learn more?

Please contact Doug Friedlander to learn more about how you can support UCS.  He can be reached by email at DFriedlander@uft.org

CLS is a recipient of of Guidestar's 2018 Silver Seal of Transparency