Family-School Partnerships?

In researching or shall I say benchmarking other cities in this great US of A with regard to Family-School Partnerships I came across this awesome resource: The Parent Education Network (PEN). The opening statement in the "eyebrow" section (page 2) of their brochure captured me immediately and it reads: "Partnerships among schools, families and community groups are not a luxury -- they are a necessity!" How profound!

PEN is the State of Wyoming’s PIRC Center (Parent Information and Resource Center) a NCLB funded resource. Their Mission is to provide a means of communication, cooperation and education to parents and professionals who wish to serve and support children with and without disabilities. They aim to help families become more active in their children’s learning and education, and obtain better programs and services through advocacy, education and referral.

Additionally, here are some of their key tenets:

• Partnerships help build and sustain public support for schools. Schools that embrace the partnership idea enjoy higher levels of respect and trust in the community. Partnership schools tend to have better teacher morale and higher ratings of teachers by families.
• Partnership and student academic achievement are closely linked. When schools, families and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer and like school more. Research shows engaging families in children’s learning has a positive impact on student achievement.
• Families and the community can help schools overcome the challenges they face. A collaborative approach is needed to define the problems, discuss productive approaches and design and implement possible solutions.
• Teachers can benefit from parent and community partnerships. Involved families are more likely to understand the goals of the teacher and the school and to be supportive of proposed changes. Teachers who involve parents positively and consistently tend to rate families more positively.
  

Did you know Plainfield has a PIRC facility? Well we do. Tell me about it. Send me either a comment to this post or an email and provide your name, school affiliation and experiences with our PIRC facility. Tell me what it offers, tell me where it is, tell me if it even closely resembles the offerings and clarity of purpose that the PEN provides.

I went to our PIRC facility and it exudes possibilities, but like faith, possibilities without work is dead.

So Families – use your resources! It’s there – its paid for – now make it WORK!