The reason I wanted to explore grassroots organizing around health and wellness services being provided in schools is because the argument for both grassroots organizations and the access to physical and mental health services in school are based on a deeply connected community and they both acknowledge a widespread issue that permeates beyond the walls of the local school. For grassroots organizing, a group of people notices a problem, like hard to access health care and poor mental health and they can gather support from parents and community members to implement change. For public health services in school, by providing services for dental care, physicals, eye-exams, and counseling services it suggests that a school cannot be isolated from the basic needs not only its students but its surrounding community too. You can’t isolate a schools from it’s community. You can’t blame the school for bigger issues. But you can use public education as a hub for all kinds of solutions that address the whole student and the neighborhood they live in and society at large. In doing so you embed public schooling into society instead of making it this separate shrine where all is supposed to become equal.

This project also gave me hope. Often when I am learning about inequities that arise because of housing discrimination and poverty, the issues seem unmanageably big, like no one can do anything substantial. Policy and reform feel inaccessible to me but grassroots organizing feels so in touch with what people need and can realistically do. Grassroots organizing also reinforces what public education is supposed to do. It’s not supposed to be the playing field of a political game, but rather a place that serves students and gives them what they need to succeed. Also, by focussing on a particular community and particular issue, grassroots organizing acknowledges that different communities are faced with different issues and local schools need to be equitably equipped to educate their students.

The reason grassroots organizing works for launching Community Schools or other health and wellness services is because it addresses how underserved urban communities lack appropriate health care options or access to needed services. Within the campaigns for Community Schools from groups like Community Schools for Philadelphia, The Center for Popular Democracy, and Maryland Communities they are not only fighting for what specific communities need but inherently suggesting that because of racist and classist policy there are specific communities that need health services provided within school walls because they wouldn’t have adequate access otherwise. Poor urban neighborhoods face more health issues than affluent ones and yet have less access to health care, which these above mentioned campaigns have noticed and begun to combat, with no other agenda than the utmost success of students and the community they are a part of.

Organizing around Community Schools and the distribution of health services in schools reincorporates public schools into the community. The success of a student begins to reflect the success of the community; in a better world, which grassroots organizing is trying to create, both would thrive. Neoliberal policies that focus on the individual student and their individual success don’t work in urban areas where community has such an effect of each student. When housing discrimination and low wages combine in very concentrated areas of cities the only solution is to restore the whole community and make the local school work in non-traditional ways address the unique issues of public health. A student in an affluent neighborhood who has never had trouble accessing counseling or getting to a dentist appointment is going to be able to focus more on their schooling and perhaps individual-based reforms like school choice and the spread of charter schools would work for them, whereas a student in a poor, deteriorating neighborhood is going plagued with seemingly unmountable physical and mental health challenges that need to be addressed, not ignored, by their school. It is harder to separate a student like this from their community because the disadvantages are so deeply rooted. By acknowledging the importance of health to education, grassroot organizers can address the individual and the community and the many ways they are intertwined.

I think the two biggest things I learned by creating this website were the importance of public health to the success of students and communities and that communities need to be supported by local public schools and vis versa. I also learned that both of these goals can be combined in Community Schools and by offering health and wellness services in schools. The future will be build from the ground up and grassroots organizers are here and ready.