For Schools
Communities In Schools of Chicago helps schools coordinate services that meet the social, emotional and health needs of students so that Chicago’s teachers can focus on doing what they do best: teach.

With our network of 159 partner schools, we work with school staff to identify student priorities, create relationships with service providers, and coordinate programs and services that address needs. Communities In Schools of Chicago trains school staff in key practices including assessment of student priorities and service coordination that help them build and sustain effective partnerships with service providers.

Working with Communities In Schools of Chicago
Walter S. Christopher Elementary School is both a neighborhood school and serves students with special needs from throughout the South Side. At the beginning of this school year, Ms. Barbara Freely, assistant principal, shared a growing concern about bullying. Christopher wanted to take a proactive and comprehensive approach to the problem and turned to CISC for assistance. CISC connected multiple services from Cook County Sheriff Youth Services including bullying prevention, conflict resolution and violence prevention services. Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital delivered their "In My Shoes" presentation that provides testimony from individuals who are disabled due to violence. To comprehensively address the violence-related issues the children at Christopher are exposed to, CISC also connected Imagination Theater and Rape Victim Advocates services to students, as well as a Between Friends' presentation for parents to address sexual violence. Ms. Freely shared with us, "CISC has been wonderful about connecting services. The bullying prevention services have laid groundwork for a further discussion. Children come to me and are able to articulate the problem. We've started to see children advocating for each other." Last year, 24 CISC-connected services were connected to 100 percent of Christopher's student body.

Best Practice Forums
An important part of working with schools is building their capacity to create effective partnerships that will provide significant longterm benefits for students. One way that Communities In Schools of Chicago builds school capacity is by hosting forums each year for our main contacts at each school. The training forums bring staff from our partner schools together and focus on best practices for establishing and maintaining strong partnerships with external partners. These school partnership forums also address timely topics – recent forums have focused on school-based strategies for promoting safe communities and mental health in the school community.