Civic engagement: a case study of civic leadership in partnering with an urban public school district

Unrestricted The purpose of this study was to describe and examine the roles of civic leaders and their relationships with the communities and local school district leaders, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of these roles and relationships. This study was guided by the overarching question: How do civic leaders work with school leaders to build the capacity needed to implement reform and improve underachieving urban schools? The following specific sub-questions were developed to guide the study and were addressed through data collection and analysis: 1. What qualities and characteristics of leadership do the civic leaders use in order to work together with the school leaders to build the relationships and social capital within the school and community needed to improve the schools? 2. What do collaborative efforts between civic leadership (input) and school leadership (outreach) look like? 3. What does the future look like for the partnerships between the local communities and the district as the cities continue their plans for urban revitalization?; Qualitative descriptive case study research methods were used to describe and examine these roles and look at whether the civic leaders can and do build successful relationships and social capital as they work with school and district leaders. The site was Colton Joint Unified School District and the communities that feed into that school district. The city managers, mayors, principals of the school district, and the superintendent were the participants.; Several major findings emerged from this study: 1. There are certain characteristics that are common to all civic leaders: communication being the umbrella over all areas; commitment to healthy youth and families through healthy programs; flexibility and adaptability; and having a vision. 2. There is a lot of input and outreach in the way of participation, cooperation, and partnering, but the deep collaboration and true partnership piece is missing. Most of the partnerships are surface level. Although the qualities of good leaders may be present and the intentions are there, there are invisible barriers that prevent the full development of the partnerships. There is a gap in the follow through of partnering. 3. Further planning sessions and regularly scheduled meetings could build better working relationships. There are many possibilities for future partnerships through budget, facilities, publications, and focus on education.-; This study recommends further research on the barriers to building relationships to determine how civic leaders can best serve their young constituents as they work with the school leaders. This study also recommends research on the strategies for implementation of partnerships, as it seems the pieces are there, just not in place. Finally, a study on leadership training programs is recommended as we will need many civic and school leaders in the near future and they need to ready to take on a variety of issues, including how to work together to best meet the needs of the students.