News and Reminders
A schedule of events for this year is available below, along with our meeting records and helpful documents for your work.
Schedule
Meeting Records
Fall 2024 Kickoff Meeting for Coaches
Agenda coming soon
Ohio Examples
NNPS Planning Templates
For School Action Teams for Partnerships (ATPs)
Activity 4 One Year Action Plan (PDF)
Activity 4 One Year Action Plan (Word)
For District Leads
Evaluation Reports
Why NNPS
Visit the National Network of Partnership Schools website to view “Why NNPS” handouts that describe the importance of this systematic approach to family engagement in education.
Coaches FAQs
1. Who should the district and school leads be?
The district lead should be someone with a district-wide position with a) time, and b) the ability to be a good coach for the school leaders. There are many different roles that could successfully fill this role such as a federal programs leader, a curriculum director, special education director, student support services coordinator, school counseling coordinator, assistant superintendent, and others.
The school lead can be the school’s principal, although principals tend to be very busy and often don’t have enough time to devote to managing an Action Team for Partnerships and keeping track of implementation of partnership activities and data/evaluation as well. So, we recommend that the school lead be someone else at the school level with time and ability to manage the weekly/monthly activities of the Action Team for Partnerships.
2. Should I continually be recruiting new districts and schools?
Yes, please let us know of your plans, and ensure you budget enough staff time for coaching, but we love to see each region expanding the Partnership Schools approach to new districts.
School/District FAQs
- Very interested in how partnership schools work can be supported by and support community learning center implementation. Also-are there other districts that are implementing CLCs and NNPS?
The Partnership Schools approach is compatible with a Community Learning Centers Model. The models have many shared goals. There are some schools in our network that are utilizing both approaches (e.g., Cleveland Heights University Heights), and although it takes some work to see where the two models overlap and are different, it is possible to take the best of both. If you already have a team with families and partners within your school and a resource coordinator managing the partnerships for your school, the Partnership Schools approach will provide new ways to measure and organize your partnerships program, and new resources/examples to consider using. We will continue to explore the alignment of these 2 models, and welcome your examples of how you are doing that within your schools. - What if I am having trouble finding 3 parent/caregiver representatives for my school team? Do I need to pull out of the program?
If your teams are not able to recruit any, or only 1 or 2 parents/caregivers when you are having your first team meeting to create an action plan, or the parents/caregivers are not able to attend every meeting afterward, that is okay. Recruiting parents will be an action step for the team after you get started. School Action Teams for Partnership are usually constructed by the principal and/or teacher(s) on the team. They know parents who are available, good communicators, and who might enjoy being part of the “pioneer” (start up) team for their school. They can identify, contact, and invite 2-3 parents or family members (grandparents have served on teams) who have contacts in different communities served by the school. A Family Liaison or a community partner might like this role of linking to other parents to increase family representation on this team. - Could we use the Measure of School, Family, and Community Partnerships from Chapter 9 as a kick-off with our DLT?
There is a different measure in Chapter 5 called “Starting Points” that lets your school teams assess where they are starting from in family engagement. This is a better place to start. After a year or a year and a half, the Chapter 9 Measure can be used to think about “where are we now?
