Introducing:
International Community Collaborative
The next step in our Beloved Community’s transformational journey.
Let’s build on International Community School’s 20-year impact as an academically challenging and nurturing environment for over 400 students grades K-5 and their families each year.
What’s Next? A new homesite, a cooperative early learning center, and brand new opportunities for parents and partners to learn, live, and thrive.
Learn, Live, and Thrive
WITH OUR COMMUNITY SCHOOL
For the past 20 years, International Community School has cultivated a Beloved Community. Our school brings together refugee, immigrant and local children in an academically challenging and nurturing environment.
We are growing! In the 2024-25 school year, International Community School is serving 500 K-5 students from more than 30 countries who speak 25 different languages.
Now, we are ready to do even more!
The International Community Collaborative will create new opportunities.
International Community Collaborative is the next step in deepening our Beloved Community within the school and extending its reach throughout the surrounding area.
Together, we will strengthen and establish four elements that empower our community to learn, live, and thrive.
Four pillars of international community collaborative
International Community School: Builds on our 20-year history of serving as an academically rigorous and welcoming Community School for refugees, immigrants, and local children. As part of our next steps, this Community School will acquire or build a new home site nestled in the Clarkston community.
International Early Learning Cooperative: We will expand early learning opportunities for children cradle – pre-k, along with engagement opportunities for parents through an on-site, cooperative early learning center run by parents.
Institute for Community Learning: We will create a hub where parents, professionals, and people far and wide can learn best practices from our community and transformational journey.
International Community Collective: We will create an on-site center for wraparound services for children and families.
Your support and commitment is essential to making this vision a reality! Click below to subscribe for exclusive updates on our progress and opportunities to accelerate it.
Now is the time
to create International Community Collaborative
A unique moment for International Community School
Our school brings together an eclectic mixture of nationalities, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds seldom seen in U.S. public schools. Each student learns with joy in a warm and welcoming place.
When Congressman John Lewis visited, he said, “If Martin Luther King, Jr. were here, he would be happy to see that his dream of a Beloved Community has come true right here in Dekalb County.”
As our community grows, we have the opportunity to break barriers and build bridges that help everyone thrive by:
- Finding a new home site for ICS in Clarkston or Stone Mountain.
- Bringing over 30 community partners together in one place.
- Creating space for parents and caregivers to learn and leverage new skills.
- Growing our school to serve up to 600 students each year.
- Launching an on-site early learning center, run by parents!
Through the International Community Collaborative, we can impact family units, partners, and even the world!
Why International Community School?
We have a proven record of inclusive education and holistic impact.
An International Baccalaureate School, ICS has offered excellent education to refugees, immigrants, and local children for 20+ years.
In this nurturing, diverse, and connected environment, our students excel! Children from all backgrounds thrive at ICS—academically and socio-emotionally.
We are ready to take these gains further!
2024-25 Academics at-a-glance
The Community School Model guides our shared success.
Over the past 20+ years, ICS has been organically using a form of the Community School model.
What is a Community School? Simply put, it’s a public school that offers wraparound services and support for students and the people who love them like:
- Expanded and enriched learning time
- Collaborative leadership and transparency
- Integrated, on-site student supports
- Enthusiastic family and community engagement
National research and years of evidence is clear: Community Schools accelerate learning and well-being for children, families, and communities. Here are some of the exemplary impacts from Community Schools like ICS:
- Improved socioemotional wellbeing
- Students average of 20 more days attended + plummeting chronic absenteeism
- 35% more focused learning time through expanded learning opportunities
- Parent participation in school activities doubled!
- 14% increase in children reading at grade level
Our supportive community helps everyone thrive, including staff, parents, and community members.
Each member of our community (staff, family, and student) is unique and essential to our life together on this Transformational Journey.
One example is the Aspiring Teachers Program, which ICS offers with the Refugee Women’s Network.
Success story: The Aspiring Teachers Program
Through this program, refugee women work as teaching assistants at ICS while they complete their certification. Within one year, they become co-teachers. Within two years, they are ready to lead their own classrooms.
This program shows how a Community School can change lives and improve education for all. The International Community Collaborative will increase our impact and capacity for initiatives like this one even more!
Let’s create more wins like this one for our Beloved Community!
Your support
will make the International Community Collaborative
real.
It’s a big vision, and we need everyone – students, families, partners, supporters, and people like you.
Find your place in the Beloved Community of ICS today. Let’s reach for new heights and advance to greatness together.