Strategy 4: Develop Specific Learning Opportunities for Families and the Community to Partner With CJUSD

As part of our PLP we have identified that our parents, guardians, and community play a vital role in our students’ success and have specific and unique learning needs of their own.  Our parents, guardians, and community members will be provided accessible learning opportunities (taking into consideration time, location, language, cultural norms, communications, etc.) within our school and district-sponsored committees, councils, and groups to promote, encourage, and elevate their voices and participation in our combined efforts to meet the academic and social/emotional needs of our students.  CJUSD will work to build our parent/guardian and community members leadership capacity within the committees, councils, and groups they participate in to help ensure they have confidence to express themselves, share their opinions, and contribute to our collective work.

Action Steps:

• We will survey parents, teachers, administrators regarding their professional learning needs.

• We will develop a clear plan to build our parent/guardian capacity to contribute to the collective work.

• We will provide explicit community/district/and site building opportunities.

• We will develop a clear roadmap for all education partners to access learning opportunities.

• We will ensure all education partners are involved in developing the professional learning plan.

• We will develop standards, structures, practices, and outcomes for each group (i.e., by-laws, agendas, minutes, meeting calendars, etc.)

• We will develop a task sheet to ensure communication through all available avenues (shows methods of communication, translation, times).

• We will seek out opportunities to develop capacity of families and community members specific to the needs of the sites, departments, and district.

• We will develop a calendar based on timeliness and need and leave opportunities to add current events, emergency needs,  and so forth.

• We will provide tools to measure the effectiveness of opportunities provided to families and the community.

• We will get district-level administrators to attend those parent/community workshops, not to guide or host, but to learn from and engage with nonemployee participants.

• We will provide incentives for continued participation.

Obstacles:

• We will need to develop schedules that allow for participation in learning opportunities.

• We will need to provide funding to support costs associated with learning opportunities.

• We will need to provide the space needed to support learning opportunities.

• We will need to promote and maintain engagement.

• We will need to find focus and common purpose.

• We will need to identify and meet the actual needs of the community.

• We will need to ensure staff is available to participate and guide.

• We will need to maintain credibility with education partners if our expressed values do not match our actions in other settings.

• We will need to engage members of staff and community (parents, guardians, education partners, etc.) who are not usually involved.

• We will need to provide support (transportation, childcare, etc.) to community members who may want to be involved but need additional support.

• We will need to receive ongoing support from the community (consistency of member participation). Life happens, and people may lose interest when it does.

• When people drop out of committees, councils, and groups, we will identify replacements and bring them up to speed.