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The Community School Coffee Break
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October 28, 2026
If Mapping Could Talk, It Would Probably Say: "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo"
Or at least some version of that.
Every time I facilitate community schools planning and implementation, I find myself thinking about Cinderella's Fairy Godmother. Not because community school coordinators carry wands (although some days it surely looks like it), but because the Fairy Godmother is surprisingly good at modeling one of the most important community school practices: mapping.
Stay with me.
When Cinderella needed transportation, formal attire, and a way to get to the ball, the Fairy Godmother didn't create everything from scratch. She looked around at what was already available. A pumpkin became a carriage. Mice became horses. A dog became a footman. Existing resources were reimagined and aligned to meet a specific need.
That is exactly what mapping does in community schools.
The most successful Community School Coordinators are not constantly inventing new programs, committees, or partnerships. Instead, they become experts at seeing what already exists. They identify assets, relationships, passions, services, talents, organizations, and opportunities that may have been operating independently and help align them toward a common purpose.
Magic? Not exactly.
Strategic mapping? Absolutely.
Seeing the Invisible
One of the biggest mistakes schools make is assuming they already know their resources.
"We know our partners."
"We know what programs we offer."
"We know who's doing what."
Then the mapping process begins.
Suddenly someone discovers a local nonprofit serving dozens of families that nobody had included in planning conversations. A teacher reveals a long-running mentorship program that has never been formally connected to school goals. A family liaison identifies community leaders who could offer valuable perspectives. A district department is providing services that overlap with another initiative down the hall.
The map starts revealing not just what's present, but what's possible.
Like Cinderella's pumpkin carriage, valuable resources often look ordinary until someone helps people see their potential.
The Antidote to Duplication
Mapping serves another critical purpose: it prevents silos.
Without mapping, schools may respond to every new challenge by creating a new team.
A literacy team.
An attendance team.
A family engagement team.
A wellness team.
A climate team.
Before long, the same people are sitting in six different meetings discussing interconnected issues from six different perspectives.
Exhausting.
And ineffective.
When community schools map existing initiatives, partnerships, and leadership structures before launching new teams, they can identify overlap and opportunities for integration. Instead of multiple groups working separately on related goals, community schools can create priority teams that bring the right people together around shared outcomes.
The result isn't fewer people doing the work.
It's more people doing the work together.
Mapping Creates Clarity Before Action
There's often pressure in community schools to move quickly.
Let's form a committee.
Let's start a program.
Let's launch an initiative.
But action without understanding can lead to fragmentation.
Mapping asks us to slow down long enough to answer a few important questions:
Who's already working on this?
What resources already exist?
What partnerships can be strengthened?
Where are the gaps?
Where are the opportunities for alignment?
Those questions help schools avoid investing precious time and energy in building something that already exists or creating a structure that unintentionally competes with another effort.
The Real Magic
The real magic of mapping isn't that it creates resources.
It's that it helps people see resources differently.
It reveals strengths that may have been overlooked. It uncovers connections that were previously invisible. It helps schools build on existing assets rather than starting over.
And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that community schools were never meant to be the work of a single coordinator, a single department, or a single team.
They're about bringing together the people, organizations, expertise, and resources that already exist within a community and aligning them toward a shared vision for student success.
That's not fairy-tale thinking.
That's community school strategy.
But every now and then, when a school discovers a partnership it didn't know it had, eliminates three redundant committees, and unites interest holders around common priorities, I have to admit:
It feels a little bit like bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.
In community schools, the magic isn't creating something from nothing. It's discovering what was there all along and bringing it together with purpose.
As you think about your school or community, what existing asset, partnership, program, or group might be sitting in plain sight, waiting to be connected in a more intentional way?
Welcome to The Community Schools’ Coffee Break, a space for brief, sip-sized thoughtful reflections on the work we do every day. Today, I’m diving into a topic close to my heart: shifting the narrative about rural Community Schools.
Changing the Narrative: Rural Community Schools Are Not “Smaller Versions” of Anything
Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to have a great conversation with community schools practitioners in rural areas from across the country. Collectively we discussed a simple and yet revolutionary idea: rurality as power. That phrase stayed with me long after the meeting ended. It captured something essential — something rural educators and community schools practitioners know deeply but is too often missing from national conversations.
Rural community schools are not miniature versions of urban or suburban schools. They are not “less than,” “behind,” or “waiting to catch up.” Rurality is not a deficit. It is a context — one that shapes how community schools are built, how relationships form, and how strategies take root.
And it’s time we change the narrative.
Rural Is Not “What’s Left” — It’s a Living Identity
For decades, rural communities have been defined by what they are not: not urban, not metropolitan, not densely populated. But rurality is far more complex than a leftover category on a federal map.
Rurality is a spectrum, not a binary. It is both a geographical and a social construct. It is shaped by history, culture, relationships, and identity.
When rural communities are pushed to the margins of policy and practice, rural people are pushed there too. That marginalization shapes how resources flow, how programs are designed, and how community schools are understood.
But rural practitioners know better. They know rural communities are rich with assets that don’t always show up in data dashboards or grant applications — but absolutely show up in the work.
Avoiding the Deficit Trap
One of the most important shifts we can make is recognizing that rural conditions create both constraints and strengths. Rural community schools navigate structural realities every day — small staff, long distances, fewer formal providers — but those same realities also generate powerful advantages.
For example:
Small staff can mean limited capacity — and role flexibility that speeds coordination.
Fewer providers can create service gaps — and spark creative regional partnerships.
Dense relationships can bring privacy challenges — and build trust and rapid communication.
Distance can create transportation barriers — and strengthen place identity and collaboration.
Smaller systems may have fewer specialized roles — and more nimbleness and proximity to decision‑makers.
Rural practitioners are not simply “making do. They are innovating within context, leveraging relational ecosystems, and designing solutions that fit the realities of their communities.
Rural Strengths Are Strategic Assets
When rural educators talk about what moves their community school work forward, they name strengths that are deeply rooted in place:
Intergenerational relationships
Cultural continuity
Small‑town collaboration
Deep ties between schools and communities
Strong local identity
Trusted informal networks
These aren’t accidental features — they’re strategic advantages. They allow rural community schools to build trust and strong relationships, coordinate across sectors, and design systems that feel authentic to the community.
Rural strengths are not “nice to have.” They are foundational.
Changing the Narrative Starts With Us
If rural community schools are going to be understood and supported in ways that reflect their realities, we must rewrite the narrative ourselves.
That means:
Naming rurality as a context, not a deficit
Highlighting the innovation rural practitioners bring to the work
Elevating the assets that make rural community schools uniquely powerful
Challenging assumptions that “rural” means “less”
Sharing stories that reflect the complexity and creativity of rural implementation
Rural community schools are not smaller versions of anything. They are place‑rooted, relationship‑rich, and deeply powerful in their own right.
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