Writing for The Progressive, journalist Jeff Bryant writes about the value of community schools for rural areas.
t’s just gotten worse,” Catherine Gilmore said when I asked her how her community was faring since we last spoke. In May 2021, I interviewed Gilmore, the community school coordinator at Gibsonton Elementary School, about how her Tampa Bay-area school was able to significantly improve its state performance ranking during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, she and her colleagues were focused on how best to help families during the pandemic by tracking their well-being, keeping them connected to the school via personal outreach and technology, and ensuring their access to basic necessities like food, clean clothes, housing, and medical care. It was hard to believe things could have gotten worse since then.
“Housing and food costs have gone way up,” she said when I spoke to her in June 2025, “and more families are asking us for help in addressing multiple issues, including mental health.”
Gibsonton, an unincorporated, semi-rural community near East Tampa, “doesn’t have the services and structures in place to address these issues,” according to Gilmore, “so our school needs to provide that.”
Fortunately for local families, Gibsonton Elementary had adopted what is known as a “community schools” approach in 2018, with the aim of establishing systems and structures to bring vital programs and services—including physical and mental health services, dental and vision care, afterschool programs, and new learning opportunities for students and parents—into the schools.
During the pandemic, Gilmore told me, having the community schools approach in place with a dedicated coordinator to manage it was critical. This remains true today, as educators seek to address major impediments to learning that have persisted in the aftermath of the pandemic, such as inflated costs, chronic student absenteeism, and deteriorated mental health.
“Through community schools and the system it creates, we were better able to help families during the pandemic,” Gilmore told me. “And that’s still true today.”
“Back in 2020, our school pantry was serving around twenty-five families a month,” she said. “In May 2025, we had 533 families use the pantry. We expanded our space and our offerings to include hygiene supplies and a broader selection of clothing. Our pantry is also giving away more fruit and vegetables than ever, between 8,000 to 11,000 pounds every month.”
Gilmore and her colleagues have also had to manage the impact of Hurricanes Milton and Helene, as well as other catastrophic storms that hit Florida in 2024. Through partnerships with local nonprofits and businesses that her school built through the community school approach, the school was able to provide bedding, clothing, food, and health care supplies to Gibsonton Elementary families as well as neighbors in the community who do not have children enrolled in the schools.
“The community schools approach is all about building positive relationships with students and families,” Gilmore said, “which gives schools an advantage when emergencies strike.”