In preparation for a major Beacon Community Schools expansion in SFUSD schools in 2018, a team of staff at the San Francisco Beacon Initiative and San Francisco Unified School district created the San Francisco Community Schools toolkit, with community collaboration to determine standards and theory for any Community School in San Francisco. After two years of expansion, Beacon Directors identified a need for a reference guide to how Beacons are implementing the model across the 27 schools. This sparked the Beacon Implementation Guide, created with input from dozens of Beacon staff and directors.

Each Essential Practice is organized into three levels: the overall practice; related standards and Indicators of performance

Each standard addresses specific features of high-level implementation. The indicators serve as examples of how a school site and its partners might demonstrate the standards along an implementation continuum towards a comprehensive Community School.