Jane Wernette, Parent Co-Chair, Core Team; Alan Leis, Superintendent
Row 1: Denise Mitchell, Dean Reschke, Jane Wernette (Co-Chair), Don Weber (Superintendent), Gretchen Zelinski (Co-Chair), Sheila Verkamp, Jack Buller, and Meda Peterson. Row 2: Catherine Redford, Joyce Speer, Phyllis Kimmel, Mark Pasztor, Jackie Romberg, Patti Mau, Pat Larson and Ann Vitek. Not Pictured: Dr. Mary Ann Bobosky (NNPS Key Contact), Karen Currier, Maureen Dvorak, Lenore Johnson, Nina Menis, Bessma Shammas and Ross Truemper.
Naperville District 203 is a four-year NNPS Partnership District Award winner. This year was a year of transitions as the director for partnerships and superintendent retired and members changed on the Board of Education. New leaders are oriented by the Core Team about the district's history of accomplishments on partnerships, evidence from schools, and NNPS materials and video. As a result, the district is continuing to improve its program of family and community involvement in all elementary, middle, and high schools, with the support and leadership of the new superintendent.
The Core Team includes representatives from all 21 schools and connects with the Superintendent and the Board. The Core Team conducts district-wide activities and assists each school to strengthen its school-based partnership program. The Core Team for school, family, and community partnerships is chaired by two parents, facilitated by the district Director of Community Relations. The Core Team conducts several meetings each year for the co-chairs of elementary and secondary schools' Action Teams to discuss important partnership topics, gain information from NNPS, and share practices, concerns, and solve challenges.
One feature of their work is an annual Orientation Presentation. Each fall the Core Team orients and updates new members of all schools' Action Teams about their work on partnerships. The Team developed a notebook and slide presentation, hosts a celebration breakfast to share best practices, issues a newsletter each trimester, and meets with parent co-chairs, principals, and others to continually improve the school, family, and community partnerships initiative in every building.
Among many district-level leadership activities, the Core Team assists each school with its partnership program, monitors progress, documents good work, and organizes a "Knowledge Bank" of all partnership activities across schools (over 100 different activities in 2002). The district also publishes a collection of Promising Partnership Practices from all schools, and shares its collection with NNPS to select some for the Network's annual national collection. The Core Team evaluates the work of each school using questions from the NNPS UPDATE surveys at the end of each year, and other questions of their own. The district leaders review the data, and then send the UPDATEs to NNPS.
Always improving, Naperville's district leaders plan to focus next on helping families understand the district's tests and assessments of students. The Core Team will work with the local cable TV to air the presentations and to create videotapes for all Parent Resource Centers so that parents who could not attend the original sessions can view them at convenient times.
In 2002-03, the Core Team and the Home & School Association divided tasks to help each school build a strong and unified program of partnerships. The two groups identified objectives and activities so that each group complimented the other, and enhanced the learning environment for all students.
NNPS' model comes with years of research on the importance of family and community involvement in schools. . . . The six types of involvement provide a comprehensive framework with which any school or district can build a successful program of partnerships. Each type opens the door to a wide variety of activities that can enrich the education of students and benefit families, the community, and the school and teachers. In addition, NNPS provides a lot of on-going support and resources including the Leadership Conferences, website, Handbook for Action, Type 2 newsletters, and research papers. The staff is extremely helpful and professional. The materials are well written and user-friendly for parents and educators. NNPS realizes that each district has its own culture, and is flexible when offering advice on how to structure programs of partnership. …NNPS' advice goes beyond the theoretical - it is field tested and practical.
Also see Naperville's history of Partnership District Awards in 2000, 2001, and 2002 and examples of Promising Partnership Programs on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section In the Spotlight.