Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

Communities In Schools

Oct 28, 2002

The mission of CIS is to champion the connection of needed community resources with schools to help young people successfully learn, stay in school, and prepare for life.

CIS at a Glance
The Five CIS Basics
Every child needs and deserves:


a one-on-one relationship with a caring adult
a safe place to learn and grow
a marketable skill to use upon graduation
a chance to give back to peers and community
a healthy start
Millions of young people have lost the traditional safety nets that used to provide love and security even when the nuclear family was in trouble. Extended families, close-knit neighborhoods, a church, a synagogue or mosque all could be counted on to respond when these kids cried out for help. But now, the safety net is too often stretched to the breaking point. Our society has tried to respond to this crisis with fragmented solutions. We deal with symptoms, poverty, drugs, and illiteracy as if each could be cured on its own. But only one thing will cure the symptoms of disconnection. That one thing is community. We need to build a new community around kids, a new safety net.

Communities In Schools is about creating that community. By bringing existing resources, services, parents and volunteers into a school, we meet children's needs so that they can concentrate on learning. But more than that, we surround them with a community made up of adults who care about them and about each other. We connect for kids by reconnecting adults into a new community. Founded in 1977, Communities In Schools (formerly known as Cities In Schools) is today the nation's largest stay-in-school network. CIS brings together hands in need with hands that can help. By relocating community service providers to work as a personalized team serving alongside teachers, principals, volunteers and mentors, CIS connects the schools with the resources that students need most.

Some Facts about CIS Sacramento
Launched by the community in 1987 in response to a growing dropout problem, CIS has grown from an organization serving two schools to an organization viewed as a leader for bringing the community into the schools, serving nine districts, and a total of 24 schools. Through collaborative partnerships we brokered services to over 5,500 students and their families in 1996. To date 17 schools have recieved technical assistance in building volunteer management systems to support literacy, 3 in strengthening existing systems to support tutors and mentors, and 2 school-linked sites in adjacent apartment complexes have been developed as resource and tutorial centers in low income neighborhoods.

Local CIS programs are independently incorporated, nonprofit community-, city-, or countywide public/private partnership organizations. They address the stay-in-school problem within their communities (and related problems affecting youth and their families) by adapting the CIS process to the needs and resources of the community.

Local CIS projects are the individual education sites that make up a local CIS program. The project's team of assigned and relocated staff connects the community's existing resources with students and their families.

State CIS organizations , like the local programs, are independently incorporated. Their mission is to replicate the CIS stay-in-school strategy as widely as possible within a state, and to secure state-level resources and networking for the individual CIS communities within the state.

The national office of Communities In Schools, Inc. in Alexandria, Va., helps create and support local and state CIS organizations. CIS, Inc. offers training and technical assistance through its five regional offices in Atlanta; Chicago; Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; and Alexandria, Va.
CIS national and links to all other CIS offices can be found at www.cisnet.org.

A training curriculum for communities interested in replicating the CIS model is offered at selected training locations nationwide and through CIS, Inc.'s quarterly multi-track training events.