Smaller, Safer, Saner Successful Schools. - National Clearinghouse ...

Smaller, Safer, Saner, Successful Schoolsschools into powerful institutions thatoffer children, their families, and entirecommunities true hope for a betterfuture” (Coltoff, p. 7).A thoughtful report from the NorthCarolina Department of PublicInstruction summarizes experiencewith shared facilities: Making schools“true centers of the communityseems to make a lot of sense. Itavoids costly duplication of facilitiesand structures, it allows under usedschools to be used many more hoursper day and year” (North Carolina, p.24).The report concludes, “True communityschools (which also provideother community services), can savelocal taxpayers significant sums ofmoney, reduce depletion of limitednatural resources, and limit sprawl.”The report does not say sharing facilitiesis easy: “When conflicts arise(and they will) each agency must bewilling to work together … to solveconflicts or problems …” (NorthCarolina, p. 24). However, as that report,and the following case studiesshow, conflicts can be overcome.Families and students will benefit.The next section offers brief casestudies of schools carrying out theseprinciples of small school size and/orshared-co-located facilities. The casestudies include both district run publicschools and charter publicschools. We know enough to domuch better. We hope the followingexamples will encourage and assistpeople who want to make a differencefor students and their families.22a22b22a and 22b: Like many excellentsmall schools, Codman reaches out,developing relationships with otherorganizations to help its studentslearn about, for example, nature anddrama.22