Row 1:Chuck Freundt, Dr. Alan Leis, Patrick Gaskin, Kitty Murphy, and Kitty Ryan.
Row 2:Kathy Meyers, Erin Anderson, Theresa Tinker, Jessica Jozwiak, Nanette Awe, Nina Menis, Peggy Kulling, Yvonne Janvrin, Jeannie Matula, Julie Kassen, and Dr. Melanie Raczkiewicz.
District-Level Leadership for Partnerships: Computer Redeployment Program
This 10-year Partnership District Award winner demonstrates how district leaders keep even excellent programs fresh and progressing in innovative and important ways. Every year, Naperville Community School District 203 retires some of its older computers. In the past, these were sold to a liquidator for fair market value. In 2008, a pair of innovative community business partners who are members of a junior high school’s Action Team for Partnerships (ATP) realized that there might be other ways to capture the financial and educational values in the old computers. About 3% of the district’s student population did not have access to a computer at home, but the old machines would have to be refurbished to make them useful to students. With the Naperville Technology Group (NTG), the business partners created the Computer Redeployment Program in which tech-savvy students volunteered to provide this service.
Over 230 notebook computers were repaired and distributed to students who needed them at two Naperville high schools and five junior high schools. Later in the school year, another 200 computers were renewed and sold inexpensively to parents and other community members, raising $58,000 for the Naperville Education Foundation. Twelve more students, selected on teachers’ recommendations overhauled the remaining notebooks that needed more advanced repairs. Working at two NTG’s firms, with educators and business owners acting as advisors and mentors, the student interns not only provided a useful community service, but also gained career-building, hands-on tech training from local experts.
Facilitation of Schools’ ATPs: Start the Year with Strong School Teams
During the 2008-09 school year, Naperville School District’s Office of Community Relations and School, Family, and Community Partnership Core Team provided a number of opportunities for professional development on partnerships in workshops and training. One activity, the Parent/Principal Leadership Kick-Off brought together the Superintendent, Key Cabinet members, President of the Board of Education, Principals, SFCP Core Team members, SFCP Action Chairs, and Home & School Presidents from each school. Following an address from the Superintendent, presentations focused on a topic generated at last year’s Parent/Principal networking sessions and a district level priority: “What does diversity mean to you?” The school teams of the principal, parent leaders, and others discussed their ideas, successes, and lessons learned about diversity and identified challenges they needed to work on during the school year.
The district leaders also provided an orientation for SFCP teams focused on the six types of involvement and introduced an online (digital) version of NNPS guidelines for the SFCP teams. All of these activities aimed to help SFCP teams get off to a good start in implementing their schools’ partnership programs. These start-of-year investments in training and support let school teams know that their district leaders and Core Team of advisors are there to guide and assist them throughout the year.
See Naperville’s history of Partnership District Awards from 2000 to 2008 and examples of Promising Partnership Practices on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section Success Stories. Visit the district at http://www.ncusd203.org/!community/SFCP.