STANDARD SIX External Development Leadership
School executives will enact structures and processes to increase community engagement to enhance their support and ownership as valued shareholders.
Standard 6A: In order to support our families of Hispanic heritage in a safe and familiar setting, we created a festive event at the Avent Ferry United Methodist Church to disseminate information about WCPSS and local resources. Staff, administration, PTA volunteers, and Dr. Maria Rosa Rangel from the WCPSS Office of Family Engagement shared the day with the wonderful families. With mistrust and anxiety currently shrouding community connections with some populations, it was important for us to hold this event in a location that is known to be safe and trusted. The informal relationship building and watching our students take leadership roles in their church communities was heartwarming and gave us all an increased sense of pride in how our Latino families navigate the challenges of living in a foreign country while maintaining close family ties. This intentional inclusion of our Latino families modeled our material support while increasing their ownership and sense of belonging at Combs.
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Standards 6A: Our Combs parents were forced to balance supporting their children with online learning with their own job demands during the COVID-19 school closure time, causing significant challenges for many. Other families also suffered under the weight of financial and housing security needs while schools were not in session. Although staff made contact with each family individually, this form was also posted on the Gator Gallery of Learning, the Combs' online learning platform that I created through Google Sites. Responses from this outreach strategy were reviewed and individual family contact was made if requested. Answers that applied to a broader population were posted on the Gator Gallery, as well, but without the name of the one who asked. Needs were connected with resources, and the creation was based on the guidelines by Teaching Tolerance that suggested schools provide as much safety, connection, and hope as possible to families and students during the stressful COVID-19 closure period. Providing several opportunities to families to ascertain needs is important to truly support the variety of needs within our school family. |
Standard 6A: To support outreach efforts, I collaborated with a long-standing Combs community engagement partner, the Westover United Methodist Church, for the school supply drive in August 2019. The signage recognized the church's generosity and gave free advertising to families searching for a church home. To eliminate marginalization of students from low income situations, we opened the distribution to all students and actively promoted the table's resources throughout the Open House event. |
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Standard 6A: I created this mock document for a monthly writing task to increase my skill set in assembling community partners to support a school's programming. This letter to local barber training schools is intended to create a comprehensive palette of services to ensure all students have access to traditional back to school processes such as a new hair cut. I also wrote a thank you note to follow up after the fictitious event to reinforce the need for gratitude and continued collaboration. As a school budget is perennially limited, a creative school administrator culls all available resources for community sources. Many community partners maintain a philanthropy line item in their budget and leveraging this for the benefit of students extends the ways that a school can care for its students. |
Standard 6B: My background in Special Education allowed me to support several SPED needs at Combs this year to remain compliant with federal and district mandates. One example is this form to request an additional adult assistant for a student with both cognitive and physical needs. The request was granted due to the skills data collection I coached the staff on and this student received the needed support staff. I also supported the Special Education department with Progress Monitoring data collection, and their processes became an exemplar in the Central Area. Through the COVID-19 closure, I additionally compiled breaking information from WCPSS webinars and documents to disseminate to our SPED staff and Critical Response Team. |
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Standard 6B: Schools must remain in compliance with Supreme Court decisions as Federal mandated, and an informed school leader must possess basic legal knowledge in order to do that. The program course ELP 518 with Dr. Bill Harrison provided us with that groundwork to ensure our practices and decisions are legally sound. The case study regarding search and seizure that my group presented informed us that due to the responsibility for student safety, reasonable cause is the guiding principal for searched for school leaders. In contrast, officers of the law must have probable cause to search students. Such knowledge respects student rights and prevents time-consuming legal challenges from interfering with the instructional duties of administrators and staff. |