Bettie Wilson, Coordinator; Maria Pelayo, Site Action Team; Julie Kane, Principal
Row 1: Martha Espinoza, John Dargahi, Amy Tindell, Maria Urrutia, Jennifer Moles, Marta Melchor, Alice Peraza, and Christine Martinez. Row 2: Julie Kane (Principal), Elvia Pelayo, Leticia Haro, Joey Safdeye, Karla Dearden, Angelica Gutierrez, Rosa Garcia, Blanca Martinez, Maria Pelayo (NNPS Key Contact), and Bettie Wilson (NNPS Key Contact). Not Pictured: Marcia Cholodenko (Previous Principal), Lucia Anguiano, Elodia Ramirez, Soccorro Vargas, and Lisa Humphrey.
Arminta Street Elementary School in Los Angeles is recognized for its excellent family involvement program. Despite changes in principals and family involvement leaders over the past few years, the school sustains a well-functioning Action Team for Partnerships of educators and parents.
The Action Team meets monthly for at least two hours, and conducts other meetings as needed to plan and implement activities. Some members also serve on the School Site Council and keep the Council aware of the school's plans and activities for partnerships. All faculty and staff learn about family and community involvement activities in a weekly bulletin. A notebook of team meetings is maintained to orient new team members to plans and past accomplishments. The school is guided by an active district coordinator and staff in Local District B.
Arminta is demonstrating that a school with many academic challenges can implement family involvement activities that address two of the main requirements of NCLBA - communicating in languages that families understand and involving all families to support student achievement. The Action Team's annual One-Year Action Plan includes involvement activities to address reading and math goals, attendance, and to create a welcoming school environment.
Among many activities, the team holds a Welcome Back to School Night with a Parent Information Booth to introduce families to opportunities for involvement. The partnership program includes family math nights, astronomy night, and math and literacy workshops to link family involvement to student achievement. It also includes musical presentations, a photo history of family involvement, monthly newsletters, volunteering, and monthly "Coffee and Conversations" with the principal. These and other activities, including teachers' initiatives, combine to create a climate of partnership.
Arminta gives all activities an Arminta-twist in a family-friendly atmosphere. For example, Literacy Night turned a classroom into "The Arminta Café That Celebrates Literacy," with coffee, tea, and cookies for parents who listened to children read their writing aloud. The event was so successful that the ATP decided to make it an annual activity. This was just one of many literacy linked activities conducted during the year to engage parents in many ways that support children's reading and writing.
Arminta's team evaluates all activities and reviews its program at the end of the year in a retreat-like atmosphere. In this way, they learned that parents at the Los Angeles Family Housing Shelter were not attending meetings and workshops at the school, despite the team's improvement of outreach efforts and schedules. They developed a new home-visiting program to meet with and involve the families in the Shelter. Also, they learned that parents at their first workshop on students' writing wanted to try what they learned about students' work. At the next workshop, the team provided activities for parents to produce their own writing. The parents also asked to visit classrooms. The team and teachers organized "learning walks" for parents to see how students were taught writing.
All family involvement activities are conducted in English and Spanish because over 90% of the families are Latino. The team calls upon other parents and teachers - not just team members - to help implement involvement activities. This kind of participation ensures that new leaders will conduct partnership activities as the years go by. The well-planned and inclusive program has made Arminta's parents and teachers more "comfortable" with each other over time.
"NNPS has provided our school with guidelines and models to improve parent involvement … and helped us … to link parent involvement with academic achievement. In addition, the publications we received have been invaluable. Because it is a national network, the publications link us to other schools…and we can call schools to get more information."