The unique contributions that faith communities can make to public school transformation relate primarily to the prominence, leadership, influence, access, and stature often wielded by religious entities and their leaders in local neighborhoods and communities. Their distinctive competencies emanate from their role as a type of moral or spiritual guide for the members of their parishes, churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, and surrounding areas. Serving as influential community voices as well as effective community liaisons, religious institutions can prove to be abiding forces locally where you have unknown firms and individuals proposing major changes to neighborhood schools. Religious leaders can be vital partners in a school collaboration that is trying to rally key community stakeholder groups around school innovation and change.

Another important advantage of the religious sector is the extent to which so many religious enterprises are acquiring and developing acres of land and other physical assets that enable them to perform comprehensive and multidimensional ministries. While the physical assets may not have been intended for use by local schools, they clearly represent ministerial opportunities to help eliminate some of the space constraints confronting school administrators and districts. Providing space for targeted curricular and extracurricular activities during after school, weekend, or summer hours is a practicable strategy for how faith communities can use what they have to help transform and elevate public schooling in their own neighborhoods.