Takahiro Yokozawa
Principal, Kanagawa Prefectural Aoba Special Needs School

1. Aoba Special Needs School, established as a community school

Preparations for setting up and opening our school, as one of the community schools promoted by Kanagawa Prefecture Board of Education, were carried out based on the core concept of aiming to bring about a “society in which all live together”. The school opened on 1 April 2020 in Aoba Ward, Yokohama City, and is the twenty-ninth special needs school run by Kanagawa Prefecture. Two courses, the physical disabilities education division and the intellectual disabilities education division, have been set up in each of the three departments, elementary, junior high, and senior high. From this school year, we have classes right up to the third grade of the senior high education division, and there are 188 pupils and students.

Our school’s guiding philosophy is “Kind Aoba, where we weave our thoughts together”. “Supporting each individual’s certain learning” and “Moving forward with the local community, contributing to the local community” are our central pillars, as we aim to accept one another, help one another, support one another, and work to realize an inclusive society.

2. The meaning of our school as a local community hub

We believe that having our school act as a local community hub leads to instruction and support which will enable our pupils and students to live rich lives and undertake productive work in the local community. In preparation for independence and participation in society, we hope that our pupils and students will learn about connections with the community at our school and, moreover, that these will develop into links within the community in which they live.

When I was thinking about the meaning of becoming a local community hub in preparation for the opening of the school, I came across “Local crisis, Kamaishi’s response: a multilayered structure” written by members of the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo, and Professor Yuji Genda’s “The local community’s future woven out of small episodes” provided me with some hints. By making the school a place where everyone can come together naturally and providing for small but fun episodes in our everyday lives, I aim to create opportunities for learning not only for the children here but also for everyone in the community. I thought that by sharing “people, things, and time” in the venue of a school and accumulating experiences of collaboration, the school could become one way of contributing to local community-building.

People naturally develop an affection for their local elementary or junior high school through living in that community: they attend them, graduate from them, then their children attend them. How about for special needs schools? When I was thinking once more about the relationship between our school and the community, I encountered the following opinion: “The reason why special needs schools have a weak bond with their local communities is perhaps because there is no sense of affinity, making it difficult for affection to grow. This is perhaps why we see a situation in which most schools have relationships with a limited number of people, only particular people come along, and there is poor financial support from the local community.” This was something which I was told by a member of the school management council after it had got underway and, to be honest, I was taken aback. Perhaps my growing belief that special needs schools had become more closely attached to their local communities was an illusion on my part.

In order for a school to last as a local community, it needs many people to come together with a wish to do something for the school, and it needs to accumulate a variety of resources (human, material, and capital). Then, through repeated, careful deliberation about the use of these resources by the school management council, they can be put to good use for running the school. At the same time, I believe that the role of the school-community collaboration headquarters, which implements this in practice, is an important one.

3. Structure and distinguishing features of and innovations for the school management council

We came up with a shortlist of candidates to become school management councillors at the stage when we were preparing to open the school, drawing from both the local community (community organisations) and theme-based communities (from a standpoint which reflected the distinguishing features and issues of the school). As a result, we asked people who were primarily active in Aoba Ward, where the school is located, and from widely varying backgrounds, such as neighbourhood associations, medical care, social welfare, universities, NPOs, parents and guardians (hereinafter, “parents”), the ward office, local junior high schools, and so on. To be frank, there were concerns about whether we should narrow it down to people mainly in Aoba Ward. However, by bringing together members with close connections to the local community, we learned that we could have more concrete conversations and that, as we developed closer and closer connections with these members, we naturally formed links with other school districts such as Tsuzuki Ward and Midori Ward and, if necessary, councillors could make approaches on our behalf, so our initial concerns evaporated. Also, people from the local community were able to participate proactively in school management, and so we realized that this way of selecting members was very effective.

At our community school, we work together with the councillors to weave our thoughts and intentions into one cloth so that we can aim to realize a society in which we all live together. In order for everyone to have a sense of ownership and belonging, we begin by communicating the message that “This is everyone’s school”. As one example, I set up a meeting space for the school management council within the principal’s office, with individual lockers for each councillor, so that they could feel even a small sense of attachment to the school.

In addition, when it comes to the organisation of the school management council, we have set up an “evaluation subcommittee”, which evaluates the school personnel; a “seamless support subcommittee”, which is a subcommittee common to all prefectural special needs schools; and a “community partnership subcommittee” and “community collaboration subcommittee”, which are unique to our school.

4. The activities of each subcommittee

• The “seamless support subcommittee” has taken up the current situation and issues surrounding the school. The issue of the few employment opportunities after graduation in this area and, in particular, the almost total lack of places which accept graduates of the physical disabilities education division was raised and carefully deliberated. As one direction for resolving the problem, one of the councillors, who works in medical care, suggested investigating ways to put such opportunities into place, and the subcommittee adopted this for concrete action. However, there are many different issues in the process of setting these opportunities up, and this subcommittee continues to work on them. A special needs school would not be able to implement its own independent plan in this way, so it makes me aware of the importance of community schools.
• The “community partnership subcommittee” carefully deliberated the project of establishing the school and suggested that the local community play the key role in managing some matters for which schools have conventionally been responsible; this management structure has gone into action this school year. This is still rarely seen in practice at prefectural special needs schools, and is contributing greatly to reducing the workload of teachers. If our facilities are opened up after the end of the school day or on holidays, and there are opportunities for our current students to use them, this can create another “place for them” even after graduation, and perhaps serve as a venue for lifelong learning and encounters with a wide variety of people from the local community. Members of this subcommittee also put forward a concrete proposal to set up the school as a welfare evacuation centre in partnership with Aoba Ward Office.
• Two Community–School Collaborative Activity Promoters are active on the “community collaboration subcommittee”, and are now responsible for the coordination of community collaboration, which teachers have traditionally taken on even though it was said not to be part of their original role, based on deliberations by the school management council. Moreover, the president of the alliance of local neighbourhood associations, who is a member of the council, proposed policies for our special needs school to develop closer links with the community and to raise funds, which the community collaboration subcommittee is considering in detail from this school year. We are currently searching for a mechanism of collecting together the funds raised from the community and setting up a formal fund in order to give back to the local community, as well as to our children.

5. Looking to the future

The experience of collaborative activities with the local community is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for parents of special needs school pupils. I believe that as the parents themselves learn ways of connecting with the local community while their children attend the school, and see how fun this is, their networks with the community in which they live will expand, and it will become easier for them to participate in the local community.

We still only have a short track record, as this is the third year since our school opened. However, our councillors have made full use of their knowledge and networks and, understanding themselves as “directly involved”, have each laid out directions to resolve issues where the school could not easily make progress alone. They have shown us a future vision worthy of a community school, and play a major role in supporting school management.

I intend to join together with parents, teachers, and local community members to enrich the learning and experiences of the children who study at our school and enable them to live active lives as members of society after graduation. I hope that we can all feel the significance of community schools and community – school collaborative activities, and work together to make them even more meaningful. I also have high hopes that the existence of Aoba Special Needs School will contribute to deepening the understanding of normalization in our local community.