Investing in School, Family and Community Partnerships
By Gord Kerr, M. Ed.
March 8, 2006. With the release of funds to school
boards and authorities and school councils under Ontario’s new Parent
Involvement Policy, many people across the province are faced with both the
opportunity and the challenge of investing those funds in specific initiatives
to foster parent and community involvement. It is an opportunity to implement
some of the ideas that many have had for years “if only we had the money.” But
for some, it may be a challenge to implement those ideas and plans on short
notice.
This presents every school board and school council with
the seed money and opportunity to consciously invest in strengthening the
connections between schools, families and communities for the purpose of
improving student learning. Dr. Joyce Epstein has said many times that small
investments often pay large dividends, because it doesn’t take much to reach out
to parents or to engage community groups in ways that can help parents and
students.
In the Parent Voice in Education Report that led to the
creation of this policy, one of the key findings was that “there are many
differences among the regions of Ontario and that strategies that work in one
area may not be effective in another. Parent involvement strategies need to be
flexible.” The consultation found that “parents want to see schools and school
boards make an active effort to reach out to diverse parents in their
jurisdictions.” “School councils need help and support to be more inclusive.
There are also parents who may not want to be on school councils, but, with
support, could be more effectively involved in their children’s education and
schools.” The flexible funding approach appears to have been designed to
address this finding and enable local schools and boards to invest in locally
developed strategies.
The funding released enables schools and school boards to
invest in locally driven initiatives to enhance communication, especially with
harder to reach parents within local communities, enhance school events to
include diverse groups, help parents help their children with homework and to
make good course selections, and encourage parents to take an active role
supporting their children in many different ways, including participation in
community groups and lessons.
At the School Level
Perhaps there are hard to reach parents or parents from
diverse cultural backgrounds within your school community that you can reach out
to by mailing material to home or through translated materials, or by supporting
parent and student involvement in some of their cultural events. Perhaps there
are community groups already connected with hard to reach or diverse groups in
your community and can be brought in to provide further assistance to parents
and students within your school. Perhaps the funds can be used to recognize and
reward all the school’s volunteers for their efforts this year or create a
welcoming and memorable back to school event in September. Or perhaps the funds
may be used to offset the costs of public transit for school volunteers and
parents who want to volunteer their time or attend special events at the
school.
At the Board Level
Perhaps there is an opportunity to assign a staff member to
a short term project to collect sample practices from within the board and
prepare them for publication to share with principals, teachers and school
councils in the fall. Initiatives to engage parents that are already proven to
work locally are some of the easiest for other schools to adopt. Perhaps there
is an opportunity to engage in some professional development for teachers,
principals and school council or volunteer leaders focused on how to further
engage parents in education, or to build specific outreach and engagement plans
for 2006/2007.
There are research-based strategies and ideas contained
within the paper
Stimulating Parent Involvement to Stimulate Success. You can also
visit
www.partnershipschools.org and click on “In The Spotlight.”
This is the website of Dr. Joyce Epstein where you can find over
150 specific initiatives designed to engage parents and the community in
education housed within the “Promising Practices” publications.
Gord Kerr recently completed a
Master of Education at Nipissing University where his studies focused on methods
for advancing helpful parent and community involvement in education in Ontario.
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