(NewsNation) — When you walk into Noble High School in a rural corner of southwest Maine, you might feel like you are on Main Street rather than inside a public school.

“As you walk into our main entrance of the high school, it’s called the town square, and there are three large display cases that have North Berwick, Berwick and Lebanon on them so that people recognize that this is (a) coming together of the three communities,” said Susan Austin, assistant superintendent at Maine School Administrative District 60, which oversees Noble High.

Noble is what’s called a community school that offers programs beyond public education. It’s a community hub, where students and community members can access a variety of services.

Students can also apply for apprenticeships in the local trades, as well as internships and job shadowing opportunities around town. They can also access on-site mental health and substance abuse counseling offered through a local behavioral health nonprofit.

Residents frequently use the 1,000-seat auditorium for community events such as concerts or dances. The school provides an adult education program to enrich the lives of adult residents of the surrounding towns with affordable education on topics ranging from yoga to web design.

Community schools like Noble are set up so students can benefit from the resources of the surrounding locale in a way that complements their education.

“I think what everybody recognizes is that although schools are supposed to be just specifically educationally oriented, there is nothing that can be done for kids if their basic needs aren’t met,” Austin said.

In a rural area of New York, educators at Windsor Central School District are trying to meet the needs of their community by partnering with nearby Binghamton University to bring in college students to be tutors for the younger students or host after-school programs and special events.

Last Halloween, Binghamton University’s Physics Outreach Program hosted a Trunk or Treat event where college students sparked interest in science with the younger students through scary physics experiments.

The schools also partner with local medical providers to offer access to services like dental care while students are at school.

Part of the reason the Windsor district feels that it is essential to operate its schools as community schools is the nature of the large, rural district, with a little more than half of its students living in poverty.

“Most of that is generational poverty,” said Windsor Central Superintendent Jason Andrews. “What’s a bit unique is we’re a high-needs rural poverty district but tend to perform much more like a suburban district academically.”

Andrews said the district’s success is due in part to the community school model, adding that Windsor Central High School outperforms the state average on measures such as New York’s standardized exams.

The services community schools offer differ by the assets and needs of each respective community. Nationwide, it’s estimated that there are more than 5,000 community schools in the United States in every type of district: urban, rural or suburban. But rural communities in particular often lack access to the sorts of services that community schools provide.

Sixty percent of rural Americans live in areas that have been designated by the government as mental health provider shortage areas, despite the fact that problems such as anxiety and depression are more common among rural children than urban children.

Wraparound programming can help make up for these shortcomings. A review of educational research by the Learning Policy Institute found that student resources that community schools offer, such as counseling and access to medical care, can improve outcomes including attendance, academic achievement and behavior.

Although some of the services community schools offer aren’t free (some health care services rely on students having insurance, much as they would outside the school), having them located within a building that students already frequent can be helpful — especially in sprawling rural districts where transportation is often a challenge for parents.

“You’ve got a family that’s working till five or six o’clock, they’re unable to provide transportation to their kiddo for this service, now this service could happen potentially during the school day or right after the school day where we have late buses that can take students home,” said Noble High principal Roland Dufort. “So, I think that is … a huge lift of a burden.”

Like all schools, community schools often lack the funding and resources necessary to meet all of their needs. The Windsor Central School District, for instance, typically has a waiting list to access mental health resources, as the nonprofit with which they partner to deliver services has a shortage of staffing.

Austin argued that starting and maintaining community schools can also require a shift in expectations about the functions schools are supposed to perform.

“How do you help people understand that the family dynamics are different than they’ve ever been?” she said. “That school is a hub for so many of our kids? And there are folks who don’t want to agree to that, right? Because they feel like parents should be doing certain things at home and that school shouldn’t be doing that kind of work. … It’s the bottom line of helping people understand this is what’s best for kids.”