News and Reminders
A schedule of events for this year is available below, along with our meeting records and helpful documents for your work.
Meeting Records
April 25, 2024
March 21, 2024
February 22, 2024
November 16, 2023
October 25, 2023 School Team Trainings
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 NNPS to new districts.
School/District FAQs
- We are a small district, do we have to become NNPS members as a district AND as individual schools?
The district membership fee is waived in the following 2 scenarios: 1) If the district and the school is one in the same (like a charter or community school) so only one $500.00 membership fee is required. 2) The district has only one or two schools in it, but the district is another entity. In that case, the district would join for free and only the school membership fees are required. $500.00 x The number of schools joining. - 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 NNPS Model is very compatible with a Community Learning Centers Model. The models have many shared goals. If you already have a team with families and partners within your school and a resource coordinator managing the partnerships for your school, the NNPS Model 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 by the time of the training, or the parents/caregivers are not able to attend the training, that is okay. Recruiting parents will be an action step for the team after the training. Recruiting parents/caregivers is one of the common challenges faced by schools across the US who are implementing this model. You do not need to withdraw from the training, coaching and ongoing support of this program. There will be a solution and we are committed to working with you, principals, and teachers to find a way to bring parents into your school teams. Dr. Epstein will address this directly during trainings. 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?
