Enacting a vision for education in community schools: community organizing in City Heights, San Diego

In the community of City Heights, San Diego, there are between 2,000 and 3,000 refugee students enrolled in elementary, middle, and high schools. Yet, education has remained largely absent on policy agendas, prompting refugee parents, grassroots, community and ethnic-based organizations in City Heights to organize around their own vision for education in community schools. In March 2020, the arrival of COVID-19, and the closure of schools and libraries had a twofold effect: (1) to intensify longstanding inequalities in relation to access to education; and (2) to magnify the importance of the community’s organizing work. Thus, in an effort to address the impact of the pandemic, together with a trusted community organizer and four refugee households in City Heights, we developed a visual storytelling project around the theme of education (which later became Education for Change). Envisioned as an expression of solidarity, the project offered a contribution to the community’s organizing work by taking a creative and family-centred approach to explore COVID-19’s (ongoing) impact on schooling, home, and community. This contribution thus spotlights the household, centring not only the home, but the family; thereby, inviting a deeper understanding of how inequalities in education (such as access to laptops and internet at home) take shape, shift, and/or endure during a pandemic. This contribution thus offers a window into the lived experiences of four refugee households in City Heights, with an aim toward making visible the critical organizing work of this community; thereby, highlighting the ways in which the community enacts their own vision for education in community schools.