Gwen Gallagher, Action Team Chair; Beverly White, Principal (Danbury School District)
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Row P. Molloy, J. Saplio, N. Fearn, K. Ehli (co-chair), L. Rothlein, M.
Owens
Front Row P. Dalton, S. Blanchard, B. White (principal) Reading Team "STAR-Students
and Teachers are reading"
Department of Education in 1999 and selected the Partnership Schools-CSR model to implement. This model requires an Action Team for all major school improvement goals. This elementary school established five Action Teams for Reading, Writing, Math, Behavior, and Partnerships. In Partnership Schools-CSR, every member of the faculty and staff joins one team. Parents and community representatives serve on each team. The principal is connected to all teams. Each action team takes the lead to improve the selected aspect of the school's program. In this way, each team assists the whole school. The teams meet monthly, with subcommittees or small groups meeting more often to implement scheduled activities. A School Council of teachers, parents, administrators and community partners was created to oversee the work of the five action teams. It meets four times a year.
The CSR grant paid for an on-site facilitator for partnerships who assisted all of the teams with their plans, meetings, and activities. The grant also supported substitute teachers once a month to cover teachers' classes in turn throughout the day so that the teachers on the five action teams could attend team meetings to plan activities, assess success, identify challenges, review data, and plan next steps.
Among many partnership activities, the behavior team (called The Right Stuff Team) organized ways to help students develop character traits that the school wanted to emphasize, including friendship, patience, honesty, and determination. Students are selected each quarter from each class who exemplify the trait or improve dramatically. Postcards and positive notes are sent home to share skill building with parents. This schoolwide and family attention to behavior, along with attention to behavior in the cafeteria, resulted in a dramatic decrease of students suspended from school from over 20 students (before this work began) to 1 or 2 per year for the past three years. The teams keep track of attendance, test scores, and suspensions over time to see if the CSR improvements affect students in positive directions.
The five teams are addressing key challenges to good partnerships, such as providing families who cannot attend Open House Night or other events with information that they missed, and summarizing the work of all Action Teams in each issue of the school newsletter to inform all families about planned partnership activities and how to participate. Parents fill out comment cards in every newsletter in two-way communications in English, Spanish, or Portuguese to give the school feedback to the school.
An important innovation is the Neighborhood Representatives program. About 25 volunteers (including 2 Spanish-speaking and 2 Portuguese-speaking Reps) call 10-12 families each month. The neighborhood reps share information on meetings at the school, reminders about special events, and opportunities to get together with other parents and teachers. Translators also are part of the Reading and Writing teams' event: Families Who Write and Read Succeed Night where students and parents write books together about family experiences (e.g., Helping Hands, How I Help My Family, and other topics). Several business partners provide take home books, picnic supplies, or support other partnership activities.
Test scores are taken seriously at Park Avenue in the CSR program. From 1999 (base year) to 2001 (last scores available), the school increased the number of students meeting the Connecticut State Test math goal from 54 to 66%; the reading goal from 38% to 45%; and the writing goal from 21 % to 43%. The school made more progress in reading, writing, and math than comparable schools in the district.
Park Avenue's leaders wrote: The National Network of Partnership Schools has helped Park Avenue's teachers, staff, and parents work together on children's needs and student success. Teams study test scores and plan for improvement. Veteran families have been happy with the increase in family connections at Park Avenue. New families are happy to join a school organized with a full-school improvement plan. NNPS' Baltimore conferences are extremely helpful. … The Network provides for any concern a team might have. The resources are endless and the website is a great asset.
Also see this school's examples of Promising Partnership Programs on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section Success Stories In the Spotlight.
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K.
Keener, N. Miller (parent out reach coordinator), B. Fortunato B.
Closter (all representing various action teams)
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D.
Cesca, D. Pischke (co-chair), E. Molinaro, C. Pellicone, J. Brown
(co-chair), J. Galleano Writing team "Write On"
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B.
White (principal), B. Steck (co-chair) L. Chiappetta, J. Vaquez (co-chair),
L. Meeker, M. Pearson behavior team -"The Right Stuff"
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B.Closter,
K. Keener, G. Gallagher (co-chair), C. Ilardi (co-chair), P. McKeever,
J. Burns community connection "Fun Connections"
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White
(principal), B. Malone, C. Gall, B. Fortunato, D. Krafick (not pictured-
L. Shirk, C. Scrimgeour and L. Poirier co-chair) math team "M
& M's" (math motivators)
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