Our Approach

All children cared for, nurtured and ready to learn! That is what brought many of us together in 1995 and that is still what motivates us today. Rockland 21C is a true collaborative effort of family, school, community, government with children as its priority.

Initially working with Dr. Edward Zigler of Yale University, one of the founders of Head Start, we were grounded in the basics of early learning and family support. Now, we have adapted his Schools of the 21st Century community schools model to our suburban county to operationalize the 21C community schools model countywide.

Rockland 21C is known nationally to be the first countywide suburban model of community schools through linking schools to services and programs.

Our Model

21C’s original strategic plan focused on the following desired outcomes:

  1. Ensure quality health and mental health care for all children.
  2. Ensure that every child is in a safe, secure, and caring environment.
  3. Provide opportunities and support for all children to learn and achieve, in and out of school.
  4. Promote family support for, and involvement with, their children.
  5. Provide a comprehensive means of receiving and disseminating information.
  6. Ensure that children in
    trouble get help.
  7. Attain the community support and involvement necessary to achieve these goals and objectives.
  8. (Later) Design an organizational structure to support the plan.

Our primary ‘delivery device’ for the ongoing community school activities are schools. Each 21C school is guided by goals, responds according to its local community, and is based on the 21C model. Indeed Rockland schools run the gamut from rich to poor, from diverse to increasingly minority-majority.

From Dr. Edward Zigler, the esteemed developer of the Yale School of the 21st Century Program and one of the architects of the national Head Start program, we have a limitless, strength-based belief in the importance of the family as the foundation of all learning, and seek to meet the parents where they are (not where we may want them to be).

As a 21C model, and also as a legacy from Dr. Zigler, we look to engage families as early as possible through school-based Family Resource Centers, home-visiting and free preschool story hours and playgroups in schools, libraries, and downtown locations, and then provide a continuum of supports that address the whole child while placing a special emphasis on the family.