California State Senator Liu Hosts Community Schools Bus Tour


Last Updated: November 19, 2013
 

This article appeared in the November 2013 Rural Policy Matters.

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Orange County High students studying their local environment
Some of the participants on the Pathways to Partnership — Community School Strategies in Action bus tour. 

California State Senator Carol Liu (Chair of the Senate Education Committee) recently hosted a bus tour called Pathways to Partnership — Community School Strategies in Action. The bus tour was a three day statewide tour of effective cross-agency partnerships in California that are having dynamic impacts connecting students, parents and schools to local resources so that families and communities thrive.

“Senator Liu is very engaged and passionate in addressing issues of poverty across the state. Her bus tour, Pathways to Partnership — Community School Strategies in Action, reflects her passion and understanding of community schools as a vehicle for addressing these poverty issues. Many of the community schools we visited are on the vanguard of what’s happening systems-wide in California. We had a remarkable time, even nicknamed the bus “Liu-mobile for children and families,” says Robert Mahaffey, Director of Communications and Marketing for the Rural Trust and Co-Chair of the Coalition for Community Schools.

The bus tour was a significant vehicle for advocating for community schools across the state. The bus tour brought together a diverse set of stakeholders, including James Mayer, CEO of California Forward, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to bring government closer to the people and move the state in the right direction.

The bus tour also garnered significant media attention including coverage in Annenberg TV News, State Senator Carol Liu Visits Local Elementary Schools; Pasadena Now, Pasadena Area Initiative Highlighted as Part of Sen. Carol Liu's Tour and State Senator Touts School-Community Partnerships; the Fresno Bee, State Senate Education Leader Tours Heaton Elementary in Fresno; California Forward, The Not-so-Magic School Bus; the Coalition for Community Schools blog, Is Slow Fast Enough? and the Washington Post, Why Community Schools Are a No-Brainer, which included a blog post by Brock Cohen, a former English and Humanities teacher who recently joined the Los Angeles Education Partnership.

You can also read Cohen’s full blog post here.

Read more:

Coalition for Community Schools, coverage of the bus tour:

Pathways to Partnerships: State of the Community Schools Movement, a presentation to the State Education Committee Hearing on Community Schools, Sacramento, California, by Robert Mahaffey


Read more from the November 2013 Rural Policy Matters.