District News

On Nov. 10, a group of School Family Partnerships coordinators and parent leaders from the Readiness to Learn Project – as well as the School Family Partnerships (SFP) staff – met for their first professional development session this year to plan how to connect more families to their schools.

The SFP staff presented the District-adopted School Family Partnerships Plan, the Six Types of Involvement Framework, which provides a foundation for the work that 41 Family Engagement Action Teams (FEATs) are involved with at schools this year.

At the training session, participants also had the opportunity to share promising practices that are creating great results in connecting families to their schools.

Highlights of the promising practices of School Family Partnerships at schools included:

• Creating a “welcome table” at Parent Teacher Conferences with informational-translated handouts, interpreters, ushers, and coffee.

• Providing weekly coffee hours for families with information about activities that are happening in the classroom and at the school that week. The event made families feel connected and they learned more ways to support their children’s learning at home.

• Providing informational nights in the fall in the families’ language. Each night focused on one of the top four language groups which rotate throughout the fall. At these family nights, parents learned how to navigate the school, how to prepare for Parent Teacher conferences and more.

• Offering Math Nights by grade level. The events were videotaped so that families who did not attend could borrow the DVDs and learn strategies to work with their children at home.

• Creating a Telephone Tree or Room Parent system to connect, inform, and remind families of school functions and important information to support their students.

• Offering Zumba classes after school to build relationships between the school staff and families, as well as for increased health and fitness.

School Family Partnerships coordinators and parent leaders plan on visiting each others’ schools to see spaces they have created for families, such as “family rooms.”  They will also share more promising practices and work to find solutions for challenges they are facing.