This paper focuses on how to develop a community-based educational intervention when community apathy is present, or where the isolation between school and community makes partnership more difficult. The key elements for this model are three steps: (1) determining the school-community relationship, establishing that a condition of isolation precludes a school-based model of integrated services; (2) determining community needs and available resources, including educational needs and resources, in a planning matrix; and (3) developing a community organizing strategy that builds on available resources and leverages others. This model was developed in a particular school-community setting, a public housing project in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) in an area of extreme poverty and deprivation. Steps of the model were applied, and strategies have been developed to put a community-based integrated services model into place at the housing project. Two approaches that have been implemented in housing projects are suggested as transferable to the Philadelphia setting. One, Project LOOK, has been implemented in a Seattle (Washington) site where educational facilities have been located in units of the housing project. The other has been developed by Texas A & M University for communities along the Texas-Mexico border. It uses local women to promote and explain the services available. These two program successes suggest that a community school is achieved through combining a community-oriented perspective that sees education as a fundamental component of community development. Two appendixes contain data about one of the schools and examples of linked practices at work in several settings. (Contains 44 references.) (SLD)