Community School Leadership: Identifying Qualities Necessary for Developing and Supporting Equity-Centered
Principals, Leadership and Policy in Schools, Linda K. Mayger & Kathleen Provinzano. 2020
The Community Learning Center Institute, a national leader in the redevelopment of schools as community learning centers in Cincinnati, was selected to participate in a recent study of the qualities necessary to be an effective principal of a community school.
In an excerpt from the study, Mayger and Provinzano wrote:
Although adept leadership is vital to the effectiveness of a community school, the scholarly literature offers only a few studies focused solely on community school principals. Prior research indicates that community school implementation entails a significant amount of collaboration amongst multiple stakeholders, and principals are oftentimes responsible for cultivating these relationships and leading partnership efforts (FitzGerald & Quiñones, 2018; Sanders, 2016, 2018).
Further, Min et al.’s (2017) review of the full-service community school literature explained that transformation into a community school requires a principal who is open to integrating “outsiders” into the school building and leadership structures. These overlapping partnerships require principals to forgo top-down leadership and support decisions “that are made through teams of people from different positions that share responsibility” (Green, 2017, p. 377).
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