Community Service at CSS

[NOTE: Students must be signed in to their school email account to access the service log above]

 

Community service an an integral part of the CSS student identity. It is part of our "whole child" educational philosophy, as it fosters community engagement and personal stewardship. All CSS students must complete community service to earn a CSS diploma.

Goals:

  1. To promote a sense of civic duty and community involvement
  2. To promote a sense of ownership, sensitivity and responsibility over community problems
  3. To engage students in their community, broadly conceived as their school and their neighborhood
  4. To provide a real world context in which students develop organizational and leadership skills necessary to become community activists and community leaders
  5. To promote positive attitudes and values of the ideal of "service to humanity"
  6. To sensitize students to the needs and problems of others
  7. To develop practical skills, work ethic, and experiences they cannot acquire in the classroom

Community Service may take place:

  1. in our school (e.g. assisting with Open Houses; helping clean-up the gym; raking leaves and cleaning up the garbage in the park; peer tutoring CSS students; tutoring other students from neighboring schools; reading or math buddies with kids from other schools, baking for the PTA bake sales; organizing and selling at Spirit Wear sales)
  2. in churches or nonprofit community based organizations (e.g. cleaning up the local street garden)
  3. in government organizations (e.g. translating and assisting with voter registration)
  4. in hospitals (e.g reading to a person in a recovery room)
  5. in their neighborhoods (e.g. assisting an elderly person with her groceries shopping and household duties; tutoring a child who is your neighbor; babysitting for free a neighbor's child)
  6. in eligible outside internships available via the CSS College Office

Conditions:

  1. Students may not receive financial or other kinds of in-kind compensation. If any monetary compensation is available students may donate it to a non-profit organization of their choosing (including CSS) thus putting their CS to work for their community.
  2. Students must be supervised by an adult who must sign off on the CS hours.
  3. Students must have their hours documented on the Community Service Log. The log should be returned to their Counselor who will keep track of their hours.
  4. Double dipping is not allowed - i.e. using CS for other school requirements (e.g. Community redemption resulting from disciplinary actions; extra points for a course, student club, course or student government work you are supposed to do as part of your course or leadership responsibilities) is not allowed.

Here are some links for students looking for service opportunities: