Fall, 1997 No.3 National Network of Partnership Schools
Beyond Workshops: Providing Information
to Families Who Cannot AttendMavis G. Sanders
The 1997-98 school year brings with it many new challenges and opportunities to meet these challenges. By meeting the challenges for each of Epstein's six types of involvement, schools are able to refine and improve their school-family-community partnership programs. The challenges encourage schools to go beyond traditional practices in order to be responsive to all families, including those of minority linguistic or cultural backgrounds, those who live far from the school, work outside the home, or who have young children or elderly family members at home.
One key challenge that faces all schools is to provide information from workshops, school meetings, and other activities to all families, not just those who can attend these functions. Families care about their children and need to know about their children's schools and educational programs. However, not all families can attend school activities and events to obtain this information. Indeed, most families cannot—often due to competing responsibilities, limited time, and other factors.
It is important that these parents not be labeled uncaring, nor left uninformed about key issues that face their children and the school. Partnership Schools throughout the country are working to ensure that this does not happen by using a variety of methods to provide all families with important information.
Strategies to Share Information
Many schools include summaries of workshops and meetings in their school newsletters. Others keep summaries of meetings and events in parent rooms or on centrally located school bulletin boards. Some schools offer audio or videotapes of school workshops for parents to borrow and review when convenient. Other schools have sign boards located outside the school with information that parents can read as they pass by. Still others summarize events on phone message systems.
Phoning Families in Baltimore
For example, one middle school in Baltimore, Maryland is proud of its computerized phone system which permits important information to be communicated efficiently to all families. The school's parent liaison, who also is a member of the Action Team for School, Family, and Community Partnerships explains, "We can feed school information to the system, and it will automatically call every parent in the school and provide that information." The Action Team Chairperson adds that the phone system dials parents until it gets an answer, something that would take hours for office personnel to do. Among its many benefits, the phone system was invaluable when the school needed to provide families with information about immunizing their children.
The practices described above are just a few of the innovative ways that schools can ensure that all families are informed about workshops they miss, their children's educational needs, and school programs and activities. Is your school meeting the challenge of providing information to all families? If not, the 1997-98 school year provides a great opportunity to do so.
Choose another issue of Type 2
