New Mexico Community Schools

Program Description:
New Mexico has developed one of the nation’s most extensive state-supported community school initiatives. Approximately 150 public and charter schools across the state identify as community schools, including more than 75 schools currently supported through grants administered by the New Mexico Public Education  Department.

A community school is not simply a school that offers additional programs or services. It is a comprehensive school transformation strategy through which educators, students, families, community organizations, and local partners share responsibility for creating the conditions students need to learn and thrive. Each school adapts the strategy to its community’s cultural, geographic, and linguistic context while implementing six  interconnected key practices:

1. Powerful student and family engagement
2. Collaborative leadership, shared power, and voice
3. Expanded, culturally enriched learning opportunities
4. Rigorous, community-connected classroom instruction
5. A culture of belonging, safety, and care
6. Integrated systems of support

Community schools conduct recurring needs-and-assets assessments and use quantitative and qualitative data to identify priorities, understand root causes, and develop locally responsive strategic plans. Site-based leadership teams bring together school personnel, students, families, and community partners to guide decisions and connect academic instruction with expanded learning, health and social services, family engagement, and other community resources.

New Mexico’s approach is grounded in the state’s Community Schools Act and supported through a statewide infrastructure of grants, technical assistance, professional learning, evaluation, and cross-sector collaboration. Schools are encouraged to develop long-term financial sustainability plans that blend, braid, and leverage state, federal, local, and philanthropic resources rather than relying indefinitely on a single grant. 

The state is also developing several complementary innovations to strengthen implementation and sustainability. During the 2025–26 school year, New Mexico conducted a voluntary community school certification pilot involving 22 schools and 40 applications across the six key practices. As one of the first statewide community school certification efforts of its kind in the nation, the initiative is designed to recognize high-quality 
implementation, provide schools with actionable feedback, and establish a pathway for sustaining the strategy beyond time-limited implementation grants.

Beginning in the 2026–27 school year, New Mexico is also launching a Community Schools Micro-Credential initiative to strengthen the knowledge and practice of community school coordinators, educators, and school leaders. The initiative combines self-paced learning with facilitated coaching and competency-based demonstrations of practice in areas such as community school foundations, collaborative leadership, student and family engagement, integrated supports, and the six key practices.

Statewide implementation is supported through collaborative structures that connect schools, districts, state agencies, community-based organizations, researchers, and technical-assistance partners. These include the New Mexico Coalition for Community Schools and partnerships with organizations such as the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Community School Partnership, Southwest Institute for Transformational Community Schools, the Learning Policy Institute, institutions of higher education, and state evaluation partners. Together, these groups contribute to professional learning, research, continuous improvement, and the development of a more coherent statewide community school system.

Impact:
A substantial body of national research indicates that well-implemented community schools can improve student attendance, academic achievement, grade progression, school climate, student engagement, and high school graduation rates while expanding access to health, social, and family supports.1

Emerging research from New Mexico has also documented promising changes in attendance, academic performance, family engagement, school climate, and graduation outcomes.2 For example, a case study of Peñasco Independent School District found that chronic absenteeism declined from 45 percent in 2021–22 to 32 percent in 2022–23, while the district’s high school graduation rate remained above 90 percent.3 Although outcomes vary by school and community, these findings illustrate the potential of sustained, locally responsive community school implementation.

Population Served:
Approximately 150 public and charter schools across New Mexico identify as community schools, including urban, rural, frontier, and Indigenous communities. The 2026–27 state-funded cohort includes 76 school and district-level awardees serving approximately 24,400 students, based on the most recent publicly available school-level enrollment data.

Learn more here.