How does United Community Schools support advocacy, share current information and celebrate schools in real time? Using social media of course! It wasn’t so long ago that social media was only used as a digital bulletin board, but we now have a whole team devoted to strategically engaging stakeholders and the public.

Anthony Rosario, social media team lead and community school director (CSD) at PS 192 in Manhattan, explains, “Our social media platforms are a great space for our schools and families to take pride in their partnerships and outcomes in connection with the community school model.” For example, we recently highlighted parent and family engagement, a crucial pillar, in our model at 75M811 in Harlem. The school was able to support its families for Thanksgiving by supplying fresh and canned food items in partnership with Children’s Aid and PS 142M.

Another goal is to make connections with a wide net of organizations and individuals focused on partnerships and programming for our schools; essentially becoming a resource for our schools. Simultaneously, interested individuals or schools looking to learn from or participate in UCS’ community schools model can get a peek into our network.

Moving forward, Social Media team member and CHAH Community School Director Mesha Joseph envisions building out more community by joining more groups and following accounts of similar interests. From Sept. 20-24, we also shared our love and appreciation, across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, for our community school directors (CSDs) during @CommSchools 5th Annual Coordinators Appreciation Week! #CoordinatorsRock. We featured our CSDs in action being agents for good in their communities. One week is not enough to express our gratitude!

Activism is at the top of our social media feeds as well. Most recently, we highlighted UCS’ support for the UFT’s Day of Action campaign to encourage the City Council to bring the class-size bill to a vote. The passage of this bill would allow for lowered class sizes in many of our NYC public schools’ classrooms.

Nicole Jones, a social media team member and the community engagement director to District 21 and the NYU Langone Health Clinic at PS188 in Coney Island, pointed out all the amazing people and the activism happening in the UCS. She believes we need to curate posts in a way that tells these stories, “Great things are happening daily yet great posts / tweets rarely just happen.” The UCS social media team will be focused on creating content that spreads the messages needed for change.

The best way to engage with UCS via social media is by visiting and interacting with our pages:

@UCS_UFT on Twitter
@UCS_UFT on Instagram
@unitedcommunityschools on Facebook
@unitedcommunityschools on LinkedIn