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This article describes the significance of academic enrichment and English as a second language in a community-based professional development middle school. As an example of a university-school partnership that is responding to the needs of its students, parents, and community, the Baylor University School of Education has partnered with the Cesar Chavez Middle School in the Waco Independent School District. Middle schools are critical in our communities because it is at this level that so many students decide to continue or drop out. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

A university education professor invited an urban middle school principal to "give me 50 of your most academically challenged students who need additional support to be educationally successful." What followed is an ongoing lesson in how achieving educational success is a family and community affair. One community-based middle school's attempt to build family legacies and transform its surrounding geographic community through academic enrichment for students and English as a Second Language (ESL) for their parents is described. (Contains 6 figures.)