Starting Points
Welcome to the Standard: Collaborating with Community as part of your path to ensure that families and school staff collaborate with community members to connect students, families, and staff to expanded learning opportunities, and community services.
Use the resources included here as a starting point to strengthen identified needs in your Action Plan in the area of Collaborating with Community. The Guide to Using the Toolkit includes background information and suggested steps for implementing the Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
Collaborating with Community
The focus is on families and school staff collaborating with community members to connect students, families, and staff to expanded learning opportunities, community services, and civic participation. Engaging community members, businesses, and organizations as partners in children’s education can improve learning communities through benefits such as expanded learning opportunities, broad-based support for increased school funding, and quality after school programs.
Partnerships that connect a school with businesses, hospitals, colleges, service clubs, social service agencies, youth organizations, public housing projects, labor unions, churches, and other community groups can turn a neighborhood into a thriving place to live, work, and raise a family. Many school districts are creating full-service community schools that offer one-stop resource centers for families and residents. Schools are opening their doors and allowing their communities to use facilities and meeting rooms as a way of applying school resources to solve problems.
There is one main goal for Collaborating with the Community:
Connect the school with community resources:
Parent and school leaders should work closely with neighborhood associations, government agencies, businesses, and universities to strengthen the school. These collaborations should make resources available to students, school staff, and families and build a family-friendly community.
- What links to community resources has the school forged?
- Have parents and families been part of that process?
- In what ways has support from community partners been organized?
Access the resources below for methods to encourage collaboration.
Action Steps
What Parents and School Staff Can Do to Collaborate with the Community
GETTING STARTED
- Engage as a team with parents and community members to follow the steps included in a Guide for Using the Toolkit.
- Use the School Level Reflection Rubric: Collaborating with Community to carefully examine characteristics of communicating effectively and where you see yourselves in practices connected to collaborating with community. Continue to use the rubric to evaluate growth and progress toward goals for this standard.
- Orient yourself to this toolkit section on Collaborating with Community and consider how the tools and resources can support an action plan addressing a welcoming and respectful school climate.
- Review and consider state and federal program requirements for family engagement and professional development: such as Title I Family Engagement Policies, Indian Education, English Learner Family Engagement requirements, and Special Education requirements.
WHAT PARENTS AND PARENT LEADERS CAN DO
- Ask school staff about using the Toolkit for New Mexico School Communities: Family, School, and Community Partnerships as part of process evaluate programs, use surveys and school level assessment tools found in the Toolkit such as the School Level Starting Points: Family, School, and Community Partnerships Inventory and the School Level Reflection Rubric: Collaborating with Community.
- Become familiar with the Toolkit tools and resources.
- Participate in required Parent Advisory Teams for state and federal school level programs.
- Host a community resource fair that highlights programs that support the cultural, recreational, academic, health, social, and other needs of families.
- Reach out to senior/retired citizens and invite them to volunteer at the school.
- Work with the local newspaper to promote special events that are happening at the school.
- Invite school alumni to participate in an alumni sponsors program through which they volunteer time or make a donation to the school.
- Develop paycheck-size cards with tips for how parents can foster their children’s success. Contact employers about including the cards with employee paychecks.
WHAT SCHOOL LEADERS AND STAFF CAN DO
- Engage as a team with parents and community members to follow the steps included in a Guide for Using the Toolkit.
- Reflect on the results of the School Level Reflection Rubric: Collaborating with Community with a team of stakeholders including parents, teacher, administrators to identify strengths and needs for the school in practices and policies that allow for welcoming all families.
- Review and consider state and federal program requirements for family engagement and professional development: such as Title I Family Engagement Policies, Indian Education, English Learner Family Engagement requirements, and Special Education requirements.
- With a team, collaboratively develop your Action Plan for implementing strategies aimed at this standard: Collaborating with Community
- Sponsor an annual Give Back Day on which students go into the community to perform needed work or services.
- Include in the local chamber of commerce newsletter a request from the school district superintendent for local employers to encourage their employees to attend parent-teacher conferences and other involvement activities.
- Invite local businesses to sponsor community resource workshops for teachers during the summer to help them learn about the educational, cultural, and business resources in the community.
- Host a community breakfast at the school for local businesses and civic leaders.
- Leverage resources and seek funding to invest in programs with educational and action oriented curriculums and opportunities for families and school staff such as Family Leadership Institute, Abriendo Puertas, NMPTA, After School Learning and other programs.
Resources and Tools
School Level Reflection Rubric: Collaborating with Community
Use this rubric to help evaluate how well your school partners with families and community to support student success. Think about where you see yourself in the process and strategies you use to improve practices by marking the box that most clearly matches what you are doing now. Reflect on the results as you plan and focus efforts on a shared responsibility for student success.
School Level Starting Points Inventory: Family, School, and Community Partnerships
Use the Inventory with a team to review the School Level Starting Points Inventory: Family, School, and Community Partnerships to assess your strengths and needs around engagement within your school community and current practices for improving school climate.
Puntos de inicio para inventario a nivel escolar sobre la familia, escuela y socios comunitarios
Family/Community Survey
This is one family survey example based on the six areas of National Standards for Family-School Partnerships. Use this sample to personalize or modify for your school.
Encuesta Familiar Asociaciones Familia, Escuela, y Comunidad
School Staff Survey
This survey focused on family engagement can be used to help with professional development and action planning for building strong partnerships between families, schools, and the community.
Action Plan Template
The Toolkit provides a number of action steps for collecting data and ideas for developing an action plan. Use the Action Plan template to document your goals, objectives, and timelines.
Sample Action Plan
Use this sample to help guide your action plan development based on the six Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
Student Survey
Use this survey with students to help guide your action plan development based on the six Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
(PDF coming soon)
Family Friendly Schools Walkthrough Checklist
The checklist is designed to allow schools to assess their “family friendly” practices. This tool gives school leaders the opportunity to evaluate how inviting and “customer friendly” their school is to families and the community. It can also help to point out various areas that may have been previously overlooked and can be easily addressed.
Lista de revisión para ambiente familiar en las escuelas
Effective Practices: Quick Tips for Collaborating with Community
Refer to these quick tips for practices, ideas, and references that promote family engagement practices with a clear focus on a shared responsibility for student success.
Clave al Éxito
This web-based resource can be very useful for school wide use and inclusion on web site. Everything is in English and Spanish and it includes grade guides, reading log tools, a parent-teacher translator communicator tools, multimedia parent academies, current tips and news, resources for parents and teachers with EL students and students with learning exceptionalities in special education.
Clave al Éxito
Este recurso basado en la red puede ser muy útil de amplio uso en la escuela, inclusive en el sitio en la red. Todo está en Ingles y en Español e incluye guía de grados, herramientas de registro de lecturas, herramientas de comunicación o traductor padre-maestro, academias multimedia para padres, pistas nuevas y actuales, recursos para padres y maestros con estudiantes de EL y estudiantes de aprendizaje excepcional y educación especial.
Guide to New Mexico State and Federal Program Requirements for Family Engagement
- Bilingual Education
- Title I
- Indian Education
- Special Education
- After School Programs
(coming soon)