National Network of Partnership Schools
Johns Hopkins university
partnership award
winners – 2004
WEBSITE SUMMARIES
2004 Partnership DISTRICT AWARD
WITH SPECIAL RECOGNITION
saint paul
public schools, Saint Paul, MN
Arty Dorman, Program Manager, Family and Community Involvement Office;
Patricia A. Harvey, Superintendent
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| Row 1: Sylvia Perez, Lao Lee and Anna Young. Row 2: Kao Her, and Arty Dorman (NNPS Key Contact). Not Pictured: Sharon Briggs. |
Saint Paul Public Schools, a two-year Partnership
District Award winner, serves highly diverse students and families in over 70
schools. The district has a clear
policy on family-school partnerships.
Its Office of Family and Community Involvement provides exemplary
leadership at the district level and assists schools in developing their goal-linked
partnership programs.
In 2004, leaders for partnerships
collaborated with several departments (Title I, ELL, Special Education, Indian
Education, and others) to conduct an annual Parent Information Fair; fall kick-off
for student success; Community Forums; Community Fair; Spring Multicultural Celebration;
and Family Ties workshops for Latino, African American, Somali, Hmong, Native
American, and white families. Leaders
for partnerships issue a monthly list of all family and community involvement
activities in electronic and print form, and provide translation services and
food for district events. They are working with non-English language newspapers
and radio stations in the community to share information with families about
schools in their own languages. As
Dennis St. Sauver, Executive Director of the Office of Leadership Development,
noted: This program has become a presence
in virtually every district enterprise, advocating for family and community
partnership components in all manner of district work.
The leaders for partnerships provide ongoing
training to each school to develop its partnership program. They conduct a fall conference for Action
Teams for Partnerships to increase and improve their skills, plans, and
practices; sessions for new members; refresher training for full teams; special
sessions for school principals; meetings for volunteer coordinators; and more. District Facilitators assist specific sets
of schools, attend team meetings, and guide ATPs to link plans for partnership
activities to specific goals for student success in their SCIP (School Continuous
Improvement Plan). The partnership
office also supports and guides Site Councils, PTO/PTA, and other groups to
develop leadership among parents from diverse cultural and linguistic
backgrounds and to encourage parent input to district programs and decisions. The leaders send a weekly Partnership FAX to
share ideas, announcements, new research, and best practices with all schools. (See Roosevelt Elementary School, a
Partnership School Award winner.)
The district sets three-year goals for
action. It uses the NNPS annual UPDATE
surveys to evaluate school programs and district services and to plan
improvements each year. In 2004, the
partnership office improved its volunteer safety management procedures, tools,
and forms for organizing an effective volunteer program. It also tailored the One-Year Action Plan
form to help schools link family and community involvement to their SCIPs. This year, the district added the first high
school to the Saint Paul Network and NNPS to show how all high schools may
organize family and community involvement to support student learning and
postsecondary planning.
Next year, district leaders plan to focus more
attention on helping teachers involve families with students on homework and on
other academically oriented (Type 4) activities, and on increasing family
involvement with students to plan for postsecondary education or
employment. They also want to continue increasing
the diversity of members of schools’ Site Councils to better reflect the demographics
of the student population.
ABOUT NNPS: What Saint Paul’s Leaders Say to Other Districts
The
beauty of NNPS is that it does not suggest that we throw away what we already
are doing, but helps us look for ways to (1) Link partnerships to the results
we want to achieve for our students; (2) Create comprehensive programs that
address all six types of involvement to engage all families; and (3) Take a
team approach to show that family involvement- like reading -- is everyone’s
job, not relegated to a single person. NNPS
helps districts and schools organize and generate ideas. There is great value
in linking to other districts that have faced similar challenges. NNPS also
helps districts tell their story to various publics so that the value of family
involvement is clearly understood by all stakeholders.
Also see Saint
Paul’s history of Partnership District Awards in 2003 on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in
the section In the Spotlight. Also
visit the district at www.spps.org.