Seventy years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, school segregation persists throughout the country.
In May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separating students based on their skin color violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and nullified the nineteenth century “separate but equal” tenet.
Since its official end, the evidence for school segregation’s socioeconomic costs has mounted. Research shows that segregation widens the achievement gaps among students of color and harms their educational experience.
“Racial segregation is harmful,” a 2022 Stanford study noted, “because it concentrates minority students in high-poverty schools.”
Aiming to make the best out of this grim reality, national organizations and activists have advocated for building and sustaining community schools. For instance, in 2019, United Teachers Los Angeles compelled the city’s Unified School District to open thirty such schools, and Philadelphia partially pays for its twenty community schools through a beverage tax.
Woven into the fabric of the community, these schools tend to reflect the local population, incorporate its culture, enable students to walk or ride their bikes to school, and make it easier for parents and legal guardians to get involved.
As with the harms of segregation, the positive effects of community schools are backed up by research. Evidence shows community schools reduce absenteeism, mend behavior, and boost learning and graduation rates.
Other benefits include providing “safe havens” for low-income kids, hosting after-school and weekend activities, helping school districts meet such needs as space for professional development, and doubling as youth centers.
Community schools “can operate as a hub,” noted the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, “not just of services, but of engagement, learning, and collaborative approaches that the entire community can take part in.”
I spent the 2008-09 school year filming daily activities in Duval Elementary, a community school on the economically disadvantaged east side of Gainesville, Florida. I had heard of the school’s academic success, and I wanted to document its story.
In 2003, Duval went from a grade of F to an A on its average high-stakes state-standardized test scores. And it maintained its academic excellence through 2008. When I walked in the door for the first time, I felt shocked to see that while the faculty and administration were racially diverse and middle-class, the students were 99 percent Black.
As a community school, Duval served as a lifeline to its students, 95 percent of whom qualified for universal free meals. For a large proportion of them, getting consistent nourishment meant having to go to the school cafeteria on weekends and holidays, as well.
Duval kept its doors open to the students’ parents and legal guardians, too. Math and reading teacher Gloria Jean Merriex—the protagonist of my documentary, Class of Her Own, offered Saturday test-prep sleepovers to third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, as well as evening classes to adults.
“She invited any parent who wanted to come in and check on their kid or what not,” Anthony Guice, father of one of Merriex’s former students, says in the documentary.
Living and working in the community enabled Merriex to forge a two-way connection with parents.
“She sometimes used to go by their house, especially a lot of kids that are really going through a lot,” says Guice, who showed up at Merriex’s classroom nearly every day after his nightshift, initially to sharpen his math skills and ultimately to help her manage class sizes of up to fifty students.
Merriex reinvented instructions for vulnerable children and played a crucial role in the school’s state standardized test success. It was the community school structure that empowered her to rewrite the curriculum to meet her students where they were, practice tough love, and infuse her lessons with hip-hop, dance, and church-choir-like chanting.
Her innovations paid long-term dividends to her students, many of whom went on to college and professional careers. They also contributed to Duval’s unprecedented success, which brought in a great deal of additional funding. In 2005, the school became an arts academy. It stood as a beacon of light and a source of pride for an underserved community.
But that proved short-lived. In 2008, Merriex died of a diabetic stroke at the age of fifty-eight. In 2009, Duval failed the state standardized test. In 2015, it shut down.
East side residents have told me that Duval’s closing has left a gaping hole in the community.
A recent proposal to the School Board of Alachua County calls for transforming the former Duval building into a cultural youth center.
The lesson for our educational system is clear: While continuing to strive for school desegregation, support community schools. They may provide one of our best opportunities for education equity.