The Resounding Need

Millions of young people in our country need additional help to succeed in school and prepare for life. These children bring challenges to school every day:

•Their parent or parents may be living in poverty, or on welfare, or a guardian may be raising them.

•Often they have no health insurance.

•They may not expect to succeed because no one in their family has ever graduated from high school.

•Or these children may simply be hungry, cold or frightened by the neighborhood they live in.

Whatever the causes, it's estimated that more than 9 million young people are at risk of failure in school. That's no surprise: How well do you think you would do at math or English under such adverse conditions?

There was a time when extended families and close-knit neighborhoods could band together and help meet children's needs when the immediate family was in trouble. But for the most part, those days are gone - now the public schools are expected to fill the gap.

On the one hand, this makes good sense. The school is perhaps the last true center of the community. It's the one place where children are supposed to show up every day. And traditionally, the community supports and respects what schools stand for. We expect them to be safe, helpful and nurturing places.

But on the other hand, educators already have full-time jobs, often carried out under very difficult circumstances. How then can we expect teachers and administrators to also be mentors, social workers, counselors, big sisters and brothers - and still get any teaching done or run the schools? It's just too much to expect from anyone, no matter how dedicated.

This is where Communities In Schools comes in.