School - Community Partnerships

School-based enrichment and summer programs offer the potential to activate students' understanding of academic content while enhancing skill development.  School partners can play critical roles in meeting the needs of students while stimulating their interests. Boston After School & Beyond seeks to demonstrate how schools and their partners can enhance student learning so that they gain mastery of both the academic content and social-emotional skills that will bring success in school, work, and life.

Boston Beyond is helping to measure and document the contributions of partners to schools. The Partnership Measurement Pilot in three turnaround schools captures the contributions of partners toward school goals. With university research partners, Boston Beyond is tying concrete indicators to socio-emotional development and skills attainment, such as resiliency, creativity, problem-solving, and relationships.  This effort helps to align schools and partners around measurable and specific shared goals, create an evidence base upon which to focus improvements, and provide school leaders with insights into the value partners bring to their students. Through this work, Summer Learning Project, and other efforts, Boston Beyond seeks to improve partnership management and measurement at the school and district level to increase access to high quality expanded learning opportunities in Boston.