Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Fusarelli, Bonnie C.
• Lindle, Jane Clark

Titel

The Politics, Problems, and Potential Promise of School-Linked Social Services: Insights and New Directions From the Work of William Lowe Boyd

Ist Teil von

• Peabody journal of education, 2011-09, Vol.86 (4), p.402-415

Ort / Verlag

Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Auto-Holdings Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The purpose of this article is to illustrate Professor William L. Boyd's insights into the political ecology of schooling and his contributions and collaboration with others concerned about ensuring the well-being of students, families, and communities. Over his career, Boyd investigated the subtle and complex organizational constraints to school-linked coordinated services, including examining the reasons for the unrelenting resistance of public organizations to change, despite repeated efforts to reform them. We trace the history of the community schools movement and explore the influential, and at times prophetic, scholarly contributions of William L. Boyd to the research and discussion on the effectiveness, challenges, and future promise of this reform strategy. We hope that current and future researchers can learn from and build on his scholarship to develop new pathways to improve the lives of at-risk children. What are the impacts upon public school district governance of the change from growth and relative affluence to declining enrollment and funds? How do these changes affect the governance patterns, policy choices, and delivery of educational services? (Boyd, 1979, p. 333) To call some group together as a neighborhood is not to invoke the paramount values of American life, but it does call on feelings that are significantly viewed as "close to home." They are values whose strength perhaps arises from the implicit closeness of personal self-interest with a form of public-spiritedness (the neighborhood's interests). (P. W. Wood & Boyd, 1981, p. 103) The most imposing new cleavage is associated with the demographic and economic trends that have reduced the priority that education can claim on the public fisc. [sic] Families with children in the public schools are now a bare majority or even a minority group in many settings. The newest cleavage is therefore between the shrinking group of direct beneficiaries of supporting public education and the expanding group of taxpayers and senior citizens who feel that spending for education should be reduced. From the point of view of school governance, this further complicates the already thorny issue of to whom the public school system should be responsive and accountable. (Boyd, 1983, pp. 256–257) The rationale for integration [of health and social services with schooling] is that children have multiple and interconnected needs, yet the current service delivery system tends to be specialized and disjointed, with various service providers often functioning nearly at cross-purposes. (Crowson & Boyd, 1995, p. 121) The current reality is that schools cannot, on their own, provide for all that today's students need. New kinds of arrangements of community resources have to be brought together to ensure that children can grow up to be responsible, productive, and fully participating members of our society. (Zetlin & Boyd, 1996, pp. 445–446) The changed conceptualization of "the problem" in the US which has emerged finds its altered foundation in a larger ecology of community development activities above programs of family assistance. Although interest continues in inter-agency partnering, the focus increasingly is upon community action rather than the delivery of professionally dominated services to a poverty-area clientele. (Boyd & Crowson, 2001, p. 59)