Carmela Gomes, Site Coordinator, Marylou A. Amato, Principal
Row 1: Rosalina Acedo, Marylou Amato (Principal), Luz Maria Gomnzalez, and Carmela Gomes (ATP Chair). Row 2: Maria Mazloom, Margaret Andrews, Gina Rodriquez, Grace Jones, and Zhang Li. Not Pictured: Joe Lomento, Rick Lujan, Elsa Dominguez, and Rosario Nava.
Florence Nightingale Middle School is part of a Cluster 13 (now called Local District F) in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school joined the National Network in 1998, and also was supported by a Weingart foundation grant for Parents as Learning Partners. It has had strong collegial support from its Cluster leaders for work on school, family, and community partnerships.
The school’s Action Team for Partnerships includes teachers, administrators, parents, and others. They meet at least once a month, and more often as needed to implement planned activities that are linked to the Site Action Plan. One featured activity was an 8th Grade Intervention Program to assist failing students to make a passing grade in English. This included extra help classes and parent involvement organized with the help of a phone bank sending messages in three languages -- English, Spanish, and Chinese, and home visits to those without phones. The leaders report that because of school-home cooperation, of 51 students targeted for extra help, 33 passed their standards during the school year, and only 18 had to take summer classes to pass English.
Other activities include monthly newsletters; connections with the School Leadership Council; personalized invitations to parents to attend one-on-one conferences with teachers; a course on Home School Connections which include Asian parents who speak three different languages; four “evenings” or family nights that include topical discussions linked to middle school issues and curriculum; activities with the Environmental Club at the school; and other home-school-community collaborations.
Being part of the National Network is being part of a support group. The Network's newsletter keeps Partnership Schools advised of successful programs throughout the country. The initial training and reinforcement of the yearly review and action plans sustain the program. Joining the National Network of Partnership Schools has helped our family of schools organize and maintain a healthy relationship among our own community of schools, and given us an incentive to increase our vision for best practices to help students achieve.
--Carmela Gomes, Florence Nightingale Middle School