Arty Dorman, Program Manager; Patricia A. Harvey, Superintendent
Row
1: Sylvia Perez, Lao Lee and Anna Young.
Row 2: Kao Her, and Arty Dorman (NNPS Key Contact). Not Pictured: Sharon
Briggs
Year by year, with support from the Superintendent and other administrators, Saint Paul's Family and Community Involvement Office has developed a stellar leadership program and has systematically increased the number of schools developing comprehensive, goal-linked programs of partnerships.
Activities include an annual Parent Information Fair (part of the district's school choice program); Community Forums on key topics such as the district budget, the choice system, and promotion/retention policies. In May 2002, the Saint Paul adopted a new policy on partnerships, fully consistent with NNPS research and approaches. The director and staff of the Family and Community Involvement Office orient new principals to programs of partnership, present information to aspiring administrators, write a section of the Superintendent's Bulletin to help administrators understand the district's multiple approaches to effective programs of school, family, and community partnerships in every school.
Exemplary interdepartmental work is done through Leaders Involving Families in Education (LIFE), which conducts collaborative events such as Family TIES - Families Together in Educating Students. With the Family and Community Involvement Office, Family TIES workshops are conducted by departments of English Langue Learning, Special Education, Education Equity, Title I, Indian Education Student Placement, Site Based Improvement Family Education, Community Education, Student Wellness, and the Center for Academic Excellence. Topics include attendance, homework. health issues, positive parenting, discipline, summer activities, starting the new school year, preparing students for kindergarten, how to get involved, and others. The workshops attract Hmong, African American, Latino, white, and other families. One Family TIES agenda starts with the words Welcome, Boozhoo, Nyob Zoo, Hola, Soo Dhawaaw to welcome all groups of parents.
The Family and Community Involvement office also works with the Office of Quality Review, which visits all schools and reviews the schools plans and progress, with attention to providing training and advancing programs of school, family, and community partnerships.
The office writes a three-year plan for its own leadership actions. Schools are guided to link their plans for partnership to the School Continuous Improvement Plan (SCIP). This means that family involvement activities can be funded because they contribute to improving student achievement. The district developed a planning matrix to link the six types of involvement with the districts' major goals for school improvement (see Roosevelt Elementary, A Partnership School Award winner).
Four Facilitators serve as liaisons to the partnership schools. They provide initial team training, orient the full faculty about partnerships, communicate weekly with key contacts at their schools; send weekly faxes with information and ideas; hold quarterly key contact meetings; and assist schools to write their next year's plans. Each fall, they conduct a Partnership Schools Conference to advance skills and to orient new schools to the Saint Paul network linked to NNPS.
About 40% of students come from families where English is not the first language. District leaders provide translated materials and interpreters at parent-teacher conferences and other school events. District leaders are working with non-English language newspapers and radio stations in the community to enlist their support in sharing information with families about schools.
Virtually all schools and all districts are doing something for family involvement. The beauty of NNPS is that districts are not asked to throw away what we are already doing well, but rather to (1) extend current practices to link family and community involvement to the results we want our students to achieve; (2) understand what it means to have a comprehensive program that engages all families; and (3) become expert in taking a team approach to recognize that family involvement - like reading - is everyone's job and should not be relegated to one staff person. NNPS is a wonderful resource for helping districts . . . learn to use family involvement - like computers - not as something that feels good to have around, but as something that actually makes a difference for student success.