 |
| Byron Maltez, James Kodani, Rosa Maria Hernandez, Philip Naimo, Blanca Rangel, Angie Cardenas, Linda Ariyasu (NNPS Key Contact), Richard A. Alonzo (Superintendent), and Virginia Lampson. |
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Local District 4 (previously District F) has remained strongly committed to family and community partnerships, winning its fifth consecutive Partnership District Award. The district serves highly diverse students with many economic and academic challenges. The Office of School, Family, and Community Partnerships includes an administrator and four facilitators who assist all schools with their programs of partnership. They meet monthly with over 50 School-Community Liaisons to help improve school-based partnership programs.
Among many activities in 2005, the district conducted workshops on family involvement, provided follow-up training for Action Teams for Partnerships, and held group and individual meetings to help teams improve their plans and activities for family and community involvement. Monthly Town Hall meetings and workshops for 2nd, 6th, and 9th grade parents of students at 24 schools that need improvement aimed to sharpen parents' expectations for their children and provided ideas for how to help students at home. Literacy and math specialists and other instructional staff conducted these sessions. In some schools, principals who were new to the district assumed that parents would not attend, but over 1500 parents attended the workshops.
District 4 continued many of its most popular activities including Read with Me/Lea conmigo, Small Learning Communities, and Going On To College!, in collaboration with the organization Families In Schools (see FIS, a 2005 Partnership Organization Award winner). These programs helped parents focus on the district's literacy and success goals for students. The district also continues to offer mini-grants to NNPS schools to support advances in their partnership programs.
Looking ahead, the district will pilot a program in three of its NNPS secondary schools in 2005-06 to reduce the number of students dropping out of middle and high school. The program, a joint venture of the district, FIS, and community-based organizations, will support 9th grade students and their parents as they make the transition to high school.
When LAUSD reorganized, District 4 lost many of its NNPS-linked schools and gained nearly 60 new schools that need to develop plans for family involvement connected to goals for students in their Single Plan for Student Achievement. All schools in the reorganized district need to have plans to meet NCLB requirements for parental involvement. Some progress was made in 2004-05. About 80% of the schools focused more clearly on school, family, and community partnerships, and more School-Community Liaisons were trained to understand the six types of involvement, improve outreach strategies, and build better relationships among parents, teachers, and administrators.
District 4 helps schools evaluate their programs using NNPS measures, UPDATE surveys, and other tools. One evaluation explored why parents did not enroll their children in Supplemental Educational Services supported by NCLB, and why students, once enrolled, did not always attend tutorial sessions. The results suggested the need for personal assistance and better timing for more parents to take advantage of the services. These improvements will be made next year.
See Local District F's history of Partnership District Awards from 2001 to 2004 and examples of Promising Partnership Practices on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section In the Spotlight. Also visit www.lausd.k12.ca.us and click on Local District 4.