The Politics, Problems, and Potential Promise of School-Linked Social Services: Insights and New Directions From the Work of William Lowe Boyd

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to illustrate Professor William L. Boyd's insights into the political ecology of schooling and his contributions and collaboration with others concerned about ensuring the well-being of students, families, and communities. Over his career, Boyd investigated the subtle and complex organizational constraints to school-linked coordinated services, including examining the reasons for the unrelenting resistance of public organizations to change, despite repeated efforts to reform them. We trace the history of the community schools movement and explore the influential, and at times prophetic, scholarly contributions of William L. Boyd to the research and discussion on the effectiveness, challenges, and future promise of this reform strategy. We hope that current and future researchers can learn from and build on his scholarship to develop new pathways to improve the lives of at-risk children.

Notes

In this article, the terms “coordinated,” “collaborative,” and “integrated” services are used interchangeably. However, as Crowson and Boyd (1993) noted, “Precise usage of these terms would place them on a continuum ranging from terms referring to minimal cooperation between agencies to terms implying full integration of agencies’ programs, governance, and funding streams” (p. 173).

Although economists expect that the current economic crisis in the United States will reduce the influx of new immigrants (both legal and illegal), the large numbers of recent immigrants already in the United States are expected to stay. North Carolina provides an illustrative example of the sheer scale of contemporary immigration and migration, especially from Spanish-speaking countries. Since 2000, the number of Hispanics in North Carolina has grown by more than 370 percent (Grant & May, 2010). Nineteen other states have seen more than 100 percent growth in ELL students since 1994 (Grant & May, 2010). From these data, we cannot tell the percentage of individuals who are new immigrants versus those who migrated.

Portions of this section are drawn from Fusarelli (2008).

Testing students for HIV/AIDS is not a standard or even common practice; however, in recent years, in response to reports of confirmed student infection from public health officials, a number of high schools have offered free, anonymous HIV testing to students.

Twenty-five percent of 18- and 19-year-olds were rejected as a result of untreated but curable or preventable health problems (Schmidt, as cited in Dryfoos, 1994).