The Second Community Program was founded in 1972 by parents who wanted to extend the cooperative nursery school model—in which parents are key resources on both the classroom and administrative levels—to a public elementary school. Throughout the years, parent participation has been the cornerstone of Second Community's culture. Parents participate in school governance, work in classrooms, and raise funds for the music, art, physical education, and computer/technology programs and Italian language instruction. Their contributions, particularly in the years since state funding for schools has been cut, are essential to the success of the school.

Second Community shares the Clarendon site with another alternative San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) program, the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program (JBBP.) Second Community and JBBP are distinct, individual programs with separate teaching staff, parent groups and fundraising. The two programs also share many resources and the teachers relate as one staff.

Families may apply for admission to the school, the Second Community Program or the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural program. In other areas, including test scores and enrollment statistics, the school district treats the combined programs as one school. The current ratio between the populations of students in the two programs is approximately 50% JBBP to 50% Second Community.

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