Denise Edwards, Victoria Cerpa, Dr. Juanita Coleman-Merritt (NNPS Key Contact), Linda Del Cueto (Superintendent), Norma Lomento, Ofelia Archerd and Alberta Roacho.
District-Level Leadership for Partnerships
Local District 8 in Los Angeles Unified School District Local (LAUSD) improved its leadership on partnerships in 2007 with Grant Writing Classes for Parent Partners. The project included eight sessions designed to help those working on partnerships to increase their understanding of their school demographics, develop skills to support school programs and goals, and collaborate with various stakeholders to bring more resources to the school to support student learning, achievement, and development.
The leader of the classes, a Healthy Start Coordinator, learned to write small grants and was awarded one that funds her position. Participants are taught the basic components of a grant, methods and tools for assessing school needs, skills for identifying the interests of funding sources, ways to collaborate with others, and strategies for writing winning proposals. At least three proposals from the group have been funded. One parent-participant wrote a grant independently and started a Parent Center at her local high school. She now assists in teaching the classes.
Facilitation of Schools’ ATPs
In June 2005, a two-day training provided by the California Parent Center at the June Burnett Institute helped schools in Local District 8 learn more about NNPS approaches and best practices for family and community involvement. After joining NNPS, the district scheduled Parent Center Institutes (PCI) to help school teams and district leaders learn about the latest research, plan annual partnership programs, exchange ideas for parent outreach, and share information and resources for parent centers and related programs. The local district superintendent and other district leaders encouraged school administrators to send teams from their buildings to these workshops.
PCI offers bi-monthly training workshops for school teams that include parent leaders, school volunteers, parent-community representatives, parent center coordinators and others working to build parent partnerships. Each three-hour PCI focuses on one of the Six Types of Involvement in the NNPS framework, with speakers from inside and outside the district sharing ideas and resources. Participants take the information and presentations back to their own schools. As one parent liaison shared, “These workshops are important professional development activities that provide high-quality training how family and community involvement helps raise student achievement.” To ensure on-going progress, six Parent Community Facilitators in Local District 8 visit the schools and guide them to improve outreach to parents and to increase their capacity to conduct effective partnership programs.
See Local District 8's examples of Promising Partnership Programs on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section Success Stories. To learn more about this district, visit www.lausd.k12.ca.us and click on Local District 8.