Starting Points
Welcome to the Standard: Sharing Leadership as part of your path to ensure that families and school staff are equal partners in decisions that affect them and together inform, influence, and create policies, practices, and programs.
Use the resources included here as a starting point to strengthen identified needs in your Action Plan in the area of Sharing Leadership. The Guide to Using the Toolkit includes background information and suggested steps for implementing the Standards for Family-School Partnerships.
Sharing Leadership
The focus is on families and school staff as equal partners in decisions that affect children and families and together inform, influence, and create policies, practices, and programs.
Schools that promote shared responsibility encourage collaboration between all parties involved in a child’s education. If families, students, teachers, school staff, and community members can speak their concerns, take part in decision-making processes, and meet openly to debate important questions, they will be sharing responsibility for student success.
There are two main goals for Sharing Leadership
Strengthen the family’s voice in shared decision making:
Families must be full partners in making decisions on issues affecting their children both at school and within the community.
- Do families have a vote when decisions that touch their children are being made?
- What governance exists to discuss issues of equity, such as which children are eligible for the gifted program?
Build families’ social and political connections:
Every school should have a broad-based parent organization that offers families and school staff regular opportunities to discuss concerns with each other and with school leaders, public officials, and community leaders.
- In what ways do the school and parent group connect families to local officials?
- How do parties make sure the parent organization truly represents all families in both membership and its leadership?
Action Steps
What Parents, Parent Leaders, and School Staff Can Do
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: Sharing Leadership to carefully examine characteristics of this standard and where you see yourselves in practices connected to embracing a shared responsibility for student learning. Continue to use the rubric to evaluate growth and progress toward goals for this standard.
- Orient yourself to this toolkit section on Sharing Leadership and consider how the tools and resources can support your action plan addressing shared leadership with families, school staff, and community members.
- 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 and other parents about using the Toolkit for New Mexico School Communities: Family, School, and Community Partnerships as part of a process to evaluate programs and 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: Sharing Leadership.
- Become familiar with the Toolkit tools and resources.
- Participate in required Parent Advisory Teams for state and federal school level programs.
- Work in partnership with the principal to identify ways that parent groups can support one or more goals of the school improvement plan.
- Host a forum for candidates running for public office; focus questions on issues that affect children, families, and education.
- Work with students, parents, teachers, school and community leaders, and businesses to develop a parent/family involvement policy that establishes the foundation for involvement programs in your community.
- Get to know your elected officials at all levels of government, as they influence public policy decisions related to children and education.
- Identify all the ways your school can include and consult parents in decisions that affect the school community.
- Make sure the parent group membership and leadership is reflective of the school community.
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: Sharing Leadership with a team of stakeholders including parents, teachers, and administrators to identify strengths and needs for the school in practices and policies that support shared leadership.
- 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: Sharing Leadership.
- Conduct an annual survey and/or focus groups to get the input of parents on current and potential school programs and policies.
- At a parent group meeting, discuss the school’s scores on state tests and describe the school’s plans to improve.
- Sponsor a school accountability meeting at which school officials describe school programs, services, and performance data.
- Make sure the parents on the school improvement team represent the diverse population of the school.
- Invite parents to share concerns and ideas by having a suggestion box in the front office, and be personally accessible to all parents.
- Identify all the ways your school can include and consult parents, community leaders, and tribal leader in decisions that affect the school community.
- Make sure the parent group membership and leadership is reflective of the school community.
- Leverage resources and seek funding to invest in programs with educational and action oriented curriculums and opportunities for families and school staff such as the Family Leadership Institutue, Abriendo Puertas, NMPTA, After School Learning, CESDP and NMPED Toolkit Use Technical Assistance, and other programs focused on student success.
Resources and Tools
School Level Reflection Rubric: Sharing Leadership
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 Sharing Leadership
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)