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In the face of increasing budget cuts, public K-12 schools are collaborating with both public and private organizations in an effort to more efficiently meet the needs of the students they serve. When schools share a facility with a community-based organization, the school not only saves costs in regard to facility maintenance and operations, but potentially improves services to their student population. In addition to facility sharing, community agencies might partner with schools to provide students services that satisfy basic needs, including medical, vision, and dental care, to allow students to perform better in school. Other community organizations have cooperated with school districts to provide before- and after-school programming to assist working parents concerned about the supervision of their children outside the school day.
This is a case study of a collaboration between a school district and a nonprofit organization for the purpose of building two high school facilities together. Through interviews with district and nonprofit leaders, this study explores how this was accomplished. Analysis of interview data resulted in five emergent themes. These themes were juxtaposed with Melaville and Blank's 1991 framework. Melaville and Blank's research consisted of a study of multiple partnerships and resulted in five common variables: The Five Variables Shaping Interagency Partnerships. The final chapter of this study synthesizes the collaborative literature and the case study data to suggest a new framework for collaboration: The Five Steps to an Enduring School/Community Collaboration. Educational researchers can use this study and its framework to further explore collaborations in education. School leaders can use this framework to guide them through their own collaborative processes. All educators can use this research to answer the question, "What works in collaboration?"