Melissa T. McQuarrie (NNPS Key Contact) and Karen L. Clevinger (NNPS Key Contact).
District-Level Leadership for Partnerships
Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS) is making real progress in organizing leadership for partnerships and facilitating schools’ Action Teams for Partnerships. The district serves a highly diverse population, including students whose families are in the military, stationed at Langley Air Force Base. In 2008, VBCPS initiated First Impression Training to help schools’ “first responders” strengthen their communication skills and interactions with parents.
The goal of the four-hour workshop was to encourage over 500 teachers, office associates, security assistants, school administrators, and others to communicate better with all parents, particularly those who are typically underserved in schools. This included attention to phone messages, e-mail etiquette, and how to work in positive ways when parents call with complaints or problems. Several weeks after the workshop, district leaders conducted a follow up evaluation by sending “secret shoppers” into the schools to assess the staff members’ level and quality of customer service.
Facilitation of Schools’ ATPs
VBCPS partnered with its School Board and a local market research firm to improve the kinds of activities that schools implement to involve families. First, data were collected. The market researchers conducted three phone and internet surveys to help the district and schools understand family backgrounds, the perceptions of parents and educators about the schools, and the kinds of communication tools that might help bridge communication gaps between the two groups. For example, parents reported greater involvement than teachers recognized. Parents said they were involved in many ways, not just when children have problems. Parents were content with their level of involvement, but teachers wanted more frequent and more visible involvement from more parents.
Responding to the needs expressed in these surveys, district and school leaders developed programs and practices that would increase the involvement of single parents, highly mobile families, and other busy, employed parents who had little free time to volunteer or come to school meetings. The district provided professional development for school staff, developed a volunteer coordinator certification process, and shared ideas for improving schools’ electronic communication strategies. As Virginia Beach schools continue to build their partnership programs, the views of teachers and parents should become more similar about the level and nature of family and community involvement.
See Virginia Beach’s Partnership District Award in 2007 and examples of Promising Partnership Practices on the website, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section Success Stories. To learn more about this district’s work on school, family, and community partnerships, visit http://www.vbschools.com.