Community of Caring is built around five core values that empower young people to be responsible and caring members of a community: Caring, Respect, Responsibility, Trust, and Family. They are universally accepted values that were identified as core to healthy human development through a ground-breaking, pioneering consensus process by a group of philosophers, educators, health specialists, legal professionals, ethicists, policy makers and psychologists. These five values serve as a foundation and umbrella for school activities and initiatives in Community of Caring schools. In Community of Caring schools caring, respect, responsibility, trust and family are taught and lived.

"Values are the reasons we give for what we do, for how we live our lives. They are the ends which guide, or ought to guide, all the activities of a school."

- William Sullivan, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching