Rising up:
Stories from the pandemic 

2021 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

Lingaire Njie Community School Site Manager, Pittsburgh Langley PreK-8

One strategy for drawing on the resources of the city to meet students’ needs is the community school model. Community schools partner with other organizations to provide integrated services that can reduce the effects of family poverty on learning opportunities. Pittsburgh Langley PreK-8 became one of the district’s first five community schools in 2017. Currently, the district has eight others: Arlington PreK-8, Arsenal PreK-5, Faison K-5, Lincoln PreK- 5, King PreK-8, Arsenal 6-8, Milliones 6-12, and Westinghouse Academy 6-12.

Langley is located in Sheraden, in the West End. Lingaire Njie, Langley’s community school site manager, describes Sheraden as resource deprived. Though it’s not so far from Downtown, “we find that we don’t get the same resources that other areas of the city get,” she says. For example, the neighborhood lacks a grocery store. Eighty-nine percent of Langley students are economically disadvantaged, compared to an average of 64% for the district’s K-8s overall. Before Langley became a community school, about a third of students were chronically absent each year.

Njie, a former community organizer for A+ Schools, says she spent her first months on the job “just going around introducing myself to community stakeholders.” She also formed a site team that was charged with drafting an action plan.

By the fall of 2019, the school was open in the evening for sports, mentoring, and academic enrichment. The way that Langley staff worked with partners had changed. Njie says, “I’m not interested in saying, ‘Hey, we have a partnership with 20 organizations.’” Instead, partnerships had become strategic—centered on priority areas outlined in the action plan. Partners met monthly, facilitating collaboration among groups. School staff provided occasional training, for example, in the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support framework (PBIS), because “We want our partner organizations to know what’s happening during the school day,” Njie says.

She’d also created an infrastructure of support within the school. Teachers could use an online referral form to match students with programs. To better understand students’ needs, she sat in on academic meetings and “student voice” meetings. That fall, the school hosted a dental clinic for students and planned to hold another in March. Student attendance had improved. And Njie felt that attitudes had changed. While from the beginning staff had strongly supported the community school concept, “It took some years to get to the point where I think most of the people in the building understand what a community school is.” Rather than a program, it’s a different way of conceptualizing the role of a school. In sum, “Students know that they can come to staff for more than academic needs…and staff know that there is a formal infrastructure in place” to address them.

When the pandemic forced Langley to close, Njie says, “The anxiety was overwhelming.” She worried about how to keep her family safe. And her job required continuous readjustment. Principal Stephen Sikon kept staff on an even keel through all the changes, she says.

They also already knew how to work together to address students’ needs. To make sure students could access online learning, each teacher called the parents of their students, asked if they had picked up their devices and had Internet service at home, and entered that information into a master document. Njie says she herself couldn’t have called 600 families, but she was able to follow up with the ones who’d answered “no.” She used the opportunity to remind them, “You do know we’re a community school?” The financial services firm Ernst & Young was an established benefactor through the United Way’s Adopt-a-School program; while Langley was closed, the firm provided grocery store gift cards that supported more than 40 families for six months. “What happens when you do things like that,” Njie says, “is parents know, ‘I can go to the school if I’m experiencing a crisis, or I need help with something, or I need to figure out how to get to this resource.’”

Staff also adapted to the moment. Rather than using the referral form, teachers emailed, texted, or called Njie with more urgent requests: “Can you call this parent...Can you talk her through this?” Both Njie and teachers initiated new relationships with parents who became more comfortable with getting in touch. Strong relationships with partners paid off when the need for learning hubs in the West End became clear.

At the start of school in September, Njie hoped there would be chances to celebrate students for their accomplishments. She doesn’t want to be always in triage mode. Still, she knew the site team would begin the year scanning for needs that hadn’t been on their radar before Covid-19.

When school buildings closed and students’ education moved out into the community, some district staff were surprised at the depth of resources available. Njie, however, was used to looking out through the school door. “We don’t know everything,” she says, “and we don’t have an answer for everything.” She expects the greater community has those answers to support Langley students in their learning, she says.

Visit discoverpps.org/langley to learn more about Langley PreK-8, or head to page 76 of the 2021 Report to the Community.