Welcome everyone. It's going to take just a minute or so for everybody to to get in. reporting in progress. Welcome to Parent University, um, Douglas County School District. This is our April parent
university. Um, looks like most people are coming on in. Um, welcome. Thank you for joining us for the last parent university of the 202425 school year. I cannot believe I'm saying that. Um, our topic this month is
family, school, and community partnerships. What are they and why do they matter? My name is Amy Fister and I am the community relations coordinator here at uh DCSD. Uh, just a couple housekeeping items before we begin uh with introductions. This webinar is
being recorded. So whether you're joining us live or you're joining us at a different time, welcome. Um, but it is being recorded. Additionally, if you have any questions, please um utilize the Q&A box instead of the chat box. That just helps us. Um we're going to
save a few minutes at the end if time allows to answer questions relevant to tonight's topic. Um and as always, thank you to our parent university sponsor HCA Health1 Skyidge. We could not do this without you. As it's our last parent university
of the year, we want to celebrate a little bit. Um we've got staff uh appreciation coming up the beginning of May and so this is a really great time to recognize and celebrate some of the great great things happening in our school communities which we're going to talk about tonight um and feature one of
our schools um here tonight um around the family school and community partnership model. Uh joining us tonight um and she's going to speak a little bit first about the great things happening at her school as a school principal. It's a very busy time of year for her and she's got to leave a little bit
early, so we want to honor that. Um, but joining us tonight to kick it off, um, first we have Sarah Curto. She is the principal of Sierra Middle School in Parker. Um, and as well we have Becky Core, um, who's a director here at, uh, Douglas County School District and the
team lead for the Family School Community Partnership Collaborative. That is a mouthful. Um, so again, um, thank you for joining us and Sarah, I'm gonna, um, go ahead and and share my screen and then kick it off to you if you want to take it from there.
Absolutely. Thank you, Amy. I appreciate it. Um, as Amy said, I am the principal at Sierra Middle School in Parker. We are one of the lucky recipients of some 5A bond dollars that are going to be
coming our way thanks to our voters. Um, our building will be getting an expansion for sixth grade, um, which is set to open in the fall of 2027. So, we'll be adding sixth grade to our building in just a couple years. So,
right now, we are a seventh and eighth grade middle school with about 800 students over in the northeast corner of Parker. Amy, if you go ahead and move on to the next slide. Um, this is my third year here as principal at Sierra Middle
School. And one of the biggest things that we're super proud of here at Sierra is our student behavior system. Um, when I came here, um, some of the feedback from families and students and staff was
we need to do something to make sure our students are meeting some expected behaviors. And so where we started was with schoolwide behavior expectations. So we call it our kind of sore behavior
expectation system. Um our mascot here at Sierra Middle School is the Eagles. So of course the SOAR acronym really fits nicely. Soar stands for safety, opportunity, accountability, and respect. So all of the behavior
expectations that we have for our students really center around those four areas. Um we really worked collaboratively with our school leadership team which is representatives from our staff as well as getting a lot
of feedback um from families, current, former and future families about how they wanted um Sierra to be as a school. Um the students also had their opinions of course about student behavior here at Sierra. So we took all of that together
to develop our SOARE behavior system. Obviously the SOARE behavior system is one piece of a broader system that encompasses not only student behavior but academics as well as social, emotional and behavioral wellness in our
building. Go to the next slide, Amy. Here are a couple examples of what our sore expectations really look like. We've tried to keep it as simple as possible in order for our students to really grasp the concept of how are they
expected to behave uh when they're here at school. We have common um expectations for a couple different areas. The first one is expectation in our common areas. So that's places like the hallways, um the gym, the library,
the cafeteria, those communal places where the kids tend to gather. And if you remember your middle school days, you probably remember what it's like when you get a bunch of middle schoolers together. So clarity around how they
need to behave in these common areas is really important. I always kind of make the joke with the kids. I say keep your hands to yourself 50,000 times a day in a middle school. So, you can see that these are some pretty clear ones that
are very necessary in a middle school environment. Go ahead, go to the next slide, Amy. Another area that is really important to have some clear expectations around is the bathrooms and the locker rooms in a middle school. Um, our parents always have lots of
questions, especially when their elementary student is transitioning to middle school about what is it going to be like in the locker room when they go and change for PE? What is it going to be like in the bathroom when they have to share the bathroom with these big eighth graders? So, having these sore
expectations really helps parents, families, and students understand that this is what we expect in the bathroom. And if this isn't happening, obviously we're going to be having conversations with those students. So, it's pretty straightforward. And the kids, you know,
they always giggle when we talk about it, especially, you know, staying on task is one of their favorite ones. Go ahead. One more. Expectations for the classroom. Um, uniformly in all of our classrooms,
these are the basic expectations for student behavior in our classrooms. Now, in some classrooms, they add a few to clarify. For instance, expectations in a science classroom might look a little different than expectations in PE.
However, the basis of all expectations for the classroom are these bullet points about student behavior in the classroom. These behavior um expectations are also really important because they're the basis of our work habits grading that we do with students.
Go ahead, Amy. When um you get to middle school, in all of the DCSD neighborhood middle schools, not only do we grade students about their content knowledge, we also offer them feedback about their work habits.
Work habits are those productive student behaviors that contribute to their success in the classroom. Our sore work habits are part of just one grade that they get. Every middle school does it a little bit differently, but for us, it's a category within that one grade. What
we teach the kids is that the expectations for the classroom, we expect those to be consistently met every single day. And if you are meeting those every single day, you're doing a really good job with your work habits. You're meeting the expectations for your
work habits. We also try and teach them ways in which to go above and beyond the expectation for their work habits. Parents often ask us, "How can my student get a four in work habits?" The four is the highest grade that they would be able to get in their work
habits. So, we talk a lot about wealth. There's ways in which they can go above and beyond what the sore expectations are for the classroom. For instance, volunteering to help other students, cleaning up. Um, in some areas it's leading warm-ups, offering their opinions or
their thinking. Um, routinely participating. Sometimes it's even picking up trash at the end of class because the classrooms get so messy. Demonstrating empathy and courtesy. Um, doing some peer tutoring. Those are all examples of ways that students can go
above and beyond the classroom expectations for Soore. Go ahead and move to the next one. Amy, what's most important about our sore expectations outside of their clarity is that they are taught,
practiced, reviewed, and reinforced schoolwide at least four times during the school year. The students absolutely get sick of hearing about sore expectations. However, they absolutely
know them. We start the be beginning of the year with a 3 equals 33 model which means for three weeks we teach practice review and reinforce all the expectations throughout our our entire building and within each classroom. That
gives us 33 more weeks of a good school year ideally. However, we know with middle school middle schoolers it's very important to revisit those expectations and transitions. the students back into
school after things like fall break, winter break, and spring break. So after every single break, we have a sore review with students where once again the sore expectations are taught, practiced, reviewed, and reinforced. We
found that this really helps have uniform student behavior and expectations throughout the entire year. Go ahead. Next slide, Amy. The sore expectations along with the big three schoolwide policies are accessible
to and shared with families multiple times a year. They're posted on our website. They're posted in the building on posters, easily seen when parents are coming in, when families are coming in, where kids are can see them. Sometimes we stop kids in the hallway and say,
"Hey, let's look at the expectations for these common areas." Right now, I really need you to keep your hands to yourself because look, it's right over here. That's one of our expectations. The teachers have them posted in the classroom. We communicate them in our weekly communications with family.
Sometimes we highlight some more than others depending on how the students are behaving or the time of year. But what's really important that not only students and staff, but also their families are very aware of what the behavior expectations are within our building. Go
ahead. Next one, Amy. Some of the other things that we really try and work on to have a partnership with families outside of sore expectations are opportunities for our families to be involved in our school.
In addition to our parent teacher organization and our school accountability committee, we have a lot of other ways that families can interact with our actual school. This year particularly, we've had some parent volunteers who are supporting in our classrooms. That's been a big help to
our teachers. So, they have an additional adult in the room who can help students. We also have parent volunteers at our PTO events. Our drama productions, they usually work the concession stand. We've also had very brave parents who have volunteered for
field trips with middle schoolers. So, it's great to have them on the field trips and get to see the students outside of the school environment. We also try and provide familyfriendly activities such as a healthy activities night that gets a ton of turnout from our community, not only our school, but
our community because it offers families the opportunity to engage in a lot of different activities that are really fun for them. We've offered movie nights, a family painting night, which was a big hit, as well as a multicultural night where everybody brings in food from
their country of choice, and that's always a delicious night. We also provide theaterwide parent nights out in collaboration with our PTO, so parents can get a break from their kids, and we have a million kids running around our entire building um on a Friday night. We
also work to personalize interactions. We have a wide variety of languages spoken here in our building and by our families. And so it's very important that we also are able to communicate in their preferred language. Um we work to
address family members by name. They always love it when we know siblings of former students and they're coming back and we say, "Oh, hey, how's Cooper doing?" It it's great when they see that we remember their family as well. Another thing that's very important for
our our staff to do is addressing all students by name and pronouncing their names correctly. We have most of our staff standing at their doors greeting students when they're coming into their classroom, saying their names, asking them how they're doing, making that
connection in that supportive way. Um, again, we have a very diverse student student population and so pronouncing names really demonstrates quite a bit of respect to our students who come from all over the world. Also, some personalized two-way communication. Not
only do we use the normal channels of email and phone calls, we also use talking points which allows us to communicate in different languages with our families. We also are available at school activities for families to come
and ask us questions. I even see parents at the grocery store who sometimes have a question about something that's coming up. So really having that personalized communication and being approachable is very helpful in terms of partnering with families. Go ahead, Amy.
At Sierra Middle School, you can see that we really try and take a supportive stance with our students and having adults who are very focused on having students be safe and successful. Um, we've developed a lot of stuff with our
families over the past couple years, with our community and with our students. Um, the consistent language is very important. It's taken a couple years, but now everybody knows what a sore expectation is. Everybody knows what our three big policies are because
of that communication and repetition. We always want to partner with families when students maybe make some not so great choices as you probably did when you were in middle school. A lot of our conversations with families are about
problem solving together and seeing what can we do to support the student moving forward productively. It's always very helpful to get feedback from both students and their families about how things are going because our goal is always to be the best in the business.
So, feedback from the people who we serve is very important. Go ahead, Amy. Some other things to highlight in terms of our partnership with families is supporting our diverse populations here at Sierra. We have a wide range of
families who are part of our English language development program and we have a great set of staff who think of all the various ways to support them. We offer um specific conference nights for families within our English language
development program with translators available in a smaller environment just with the teachers that they need to talk to. It's a little less overwhelming than the normal conference night. We also engage in multicultural nights. We have
a Hispanic cultures club in which our students can be involved in and families often contribute food that the kids can make. We just try and find a lot of different ways to engage those diverse populations and celebrate everything that they bring to the table. We also do
transition meetings for families with incoming seventh grade students with an IEP. There's a lot of questions around transitioning to middle school. And our students with an IEP, their families usually have a lot more questions because it's just so much more involved.
So, we do transition meetings with each and every single one of those families and our special education staff. We also provide school visits for students and families within our SSN program. Talk about a high level of stress. Not only
is your child transitioning from elementary school, but they have severe support needs and so you're extra stressed by that. So coming over to visit our program, see the facilities that we have to support our SSN programming kind of alleviates some of
that stress and that partnership between the school and the family can start before the students are actually on site. Another area that's important in which a lot of communication between families and staff happens is around
course acceleration for our families within the gifted and talented program. They have a lot of questions about how the needs of their students are going to be met at that accelerated level. And so our GT program does a great job partnering with parents and answering
their questions as they prepare for that transition in. Go ahead, Amy. So in general, I think any middle school will tell you that the partnership between the home and school is one of the most important partnerships within
the building outside of the relationships between supportive adults and the students in our building. We really try and have that different types of communication and levels of support for each and every single student. But we know that we can't do it without the
support of our families. And I think that's it for for you, Sarah. I know you have to leave. Um, thank you so much. It's just amazing to hear the incredible work that that's happening at Sierra. And um, I won't say it makes me want to go back to middle
school, but a little piece of it does. Well, that's what we always hope for. Middle school is a very special group of students. So, we're we're happy to work with them every day. It sure is. So, thank you for the the amazing work that you're doing there and your team and um yeah, just what a what a great thing for
the community of Sierra. Thanks for taking the time, Sarah. Bye. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Amy. Um, so I think we're going to kind of switch gears a little bit and talk about how we discovered um this practice um at Sarah
Middle School and also talk a little bit about the research behind um family school and community partnerships. So um research really does indicate that um family school and community partnerships or FCP like we like to call it um really
leads to improved student outcomes in terms of attendance, graduation rates, and a deeper sense of belonging. Um, our educators report um higher job satisfaction, greater success in the classroom, um more support from families, and just an overall improved
mindset about students and families. Um and then it also actually contributes to um greater teacher retention when they have support from the community and schools report greater staff morale and a better school climate when FSP or
family school community partnerships are really woven into the fabric of the school and how they do business um on a daily on a daily basis. So um I'll give you a little bit more information about kind of the basis of our programming um in Douglas County. If you can go to the
next slide, Amy, that would be great. Um, we utilize the national standards for family school partnerships based on the national PTA standards. Um, and those standards um are are really
connected to u welcoming all families, communicating effectively, um supporting student success, um speaking up for every child. Um we like to say um all is each all students e every student um sharing power with families and
collaborating with the community. So um when we go and take a look at these standards um we can attach different practices to these national PTA standards um for family school um partnerships so that we can really reflect on our practices so schools can
reflect on their practices and see what is making the uh the biggest difference. Okay. Um we can move on. I'll give you an example of one of those pieces is our um Conexion parent group. Um, conexion is in Spanish connect uh is a Spanish
word that means connection in English. Um, this parent group is phenomenal. They have a board of um um leaders and then they also support families across the district. It's a district level um partnership um that serves to inform our
approaches and provide feedback. This year, um, DCSD's connection parent group provided feedback on the strategic plan, bullying prevention, growth and decline, and transportation. They really like to come together to learn together, um, and
then be able to support others across the community. Their goal is to build relationships, to support each other. You know, as a as a parent myself, it's really important to have those connections with other parents, especially as Sarah was saying, middle school parents. I have a middle school
student and a high school student and really thinking about um having those partnerships with other parents just like me as we're going through this is actually um a very supportive and healthy way to um to approach our work. And so this connection parent group is
integral to the work that we do across Douglas County um and serving to provide wonderful fantastic feedback for us that we can act upon. We also have a team of liaison. Um so Amy, next slide. On that
slide, um you'll learn more about um how our le team of leaison are multilingual um adults who support um families and educators to come together. They're like the bridge to help um our educators and
our families to navigate the school system. If you've ever moved to a new school um in your lifetime or a new job, half of the battle is learning where the copier is. Half of the battle is learning how to who to go to for what things and how to check grades and how
to how to get things done. And so when you think about that um in terms of a family that's new to our system, our leazison team really serves as that bridge to connect our families and support them through that process. They collaborate with our school staff and district staff to build capacity, the
skills and knowledge to serve all of our families. Um they speak um at least four languages across um our leazison team and they will collaborate with our schools in Highlands Ranch as well to
support um our our families and our students in those transitions. Um some of the examples I can provide in their work would be to support the registars and families to get new new families enrolled um with online registration um and then helping them to connect with a
counselor or um academics you know accessing grades um getting connected to extracurricular activities um things like that. So really just helping to support the academic success and overall well-being of our students and their
families. All right, next slide. All right, so you're probably wondering how we uncovered this practice at CR Middle School. Um, and that was through um our DCSD um family school community partnerships collaborative. It
was started um by the CDE, Colorado Department of Education um by Dr. Darcy Hutchkins and we brought this idea to Douglas County where we bring in um district level support from all of our departments. So we have representation
from all district departments um Sierra Middle School u and then other department other schools as well and a parent. Um the first year we really just took that year to learn about what family school community partnerships are and the impact of those those um
productive relationships. Um, and so we started to kind of reflect on where we are as a district. Um, and our schools, our partner schools took some time to reflect on where they are as schools and then chart our progress forward. Um,
year two, we um implemented the integrated multi-tered systems of support in our district and family school community partnerships lives within that system. You'll see that in a slide in a moment. Um but year two we we
sought to really identify the foundational practices of integrated MTSS. What what is it that schools do to support our students and our families that's working really well? So we decided to go on an adventure and um
pick out some bright spots because if we can seek out and and highlight what's going really well, then we can support other schools to replicate those practices. Um this year in year three um we continued those bright spot visits.
People love it. Our staff, our families love it. Um and then we are using those practices to then build capacity with other leaders and teachers. This year our theme was academic partnerships. How are we leveraging academic partnerships
to help move the needle um to help support our students in rigorous content? Um we can go to the next slide. Um, so this is this is what I was referring to in terms of integrated multi-tered system of support. This is a
lot of words and a very big framework. Um, but you're going to notice that um the the um the light blue band includes family, school, and community partnerships. Okay. So if you look at the heart of that diagram, um it's
really focused on student outcomes in terms of achievement and growth to promote um engagement and belonging. Um out from there, we're looking at um the different components um of the system. So shared leadership, what makes it
really work, shared leadership, data, datadriven decision-m, layers of support, um screening and assessment and so on. you can read the graphic, but um then we utilize our PLC work to identify um uh where students are and then what
supports they might need. Um and we I've always I've had some really great discussions around well is family school community partnerships its own thing or does it sort of live everywhere in all that we do? And I would say answer is both. We have to be able to talk about
how we engage families as um uh a separate a separate um initiative that we do. But we also have to talk about it in terms of how we make decisions and and um involve our parents as partners
in making those decisions. Um how do we we can't create a behavior plan for a student without parent input? that that school home connection is incredibly important. Um we can't create a sore behavior system without the the
partnership of our families. Um in terms of academic support, it's really important to share what's working really well for our students for individual students with families because that has a high impact on student outcomes. So we think about family, school, community
partnerships as a throughine for everything, but it's also something that we need to talk about regularly so that people understand what it is. So I think that sometimes we have some more traditional ways of thinking about um family school community partnerships and
we're starting to move the needle to think about it more broadly. If we can go to the next slide, I can show how we are starting to build capacity, the skills, knowledge, and resources of everybody in the district um to support family, school, and community
partnerships. And that really takes a lot of collaboration. We're trying to move it from a s from silos to to systems in order to get everyone in the in the room talking about how are we engaging families on a regular basis.
Um, so I'll give you some examples. If you go to the next slide, um, when you think about family, school, and community partnerships, we think of parent teacher conferences, the school accountability committee, the district accountability committee, back to school
night, right? Um, oftentimes our high schools will have um, postsecondary readiness nights and things like that. We're starting to move those things are important. we keep those, but then how do we um enhance and grow our practices? How do we do it a little differently to
to get more people in the door? Who's who's coming to back to school night? Who's not coming to back to school night? What can we do around that to engage all of our families? Um and moving our um moving the needle on embedding our practices to for it to be
more systemic. So FCP, family, school, community partnerships is just how we do business. Um, so an example of that would be we've embedded family interviews into our English language development program. We've also embedded it into our special education
programming and gifted and talented. So really getting parent input from the very beginning around um what makes your child tick, what what is what is your child successful at? Um what are your hopes and dreams for your children and what does that look like? We have parent
focus groups. Um and we have and one big um leverage point is um positive phone calls which you'll learn about in a minute from Simaron Middle School. Um and if you go to the next slide, it shows the the reason why we do what we
do. This slide shows um the highest impact on student outcomes. So the flamboyan institute or yeah flamboyan institute um did some research around what are the most impactful practices
um for family school and community partnerships and you can see that the most impactful um activities are things like academic partnering which is why that was the theme for this year. It also aligned to um to our our initiative
our our um district level initiatives um relationship building um ongoing communications positive phone calls home and then regular personalized communication um data sharing all of those have a higher impact on student outcomes. It's not that we don't do
celebrations and fundraisers and potluckss and performances and all of those things and it's not that those things are bad and we don't do them. We continue those, but we really try to leverage those systemic practices at the high high end end of impact in order to
move the needle for our students. So, let's take a look at um one school that we visited on a um bright spot visit, Saran Middle School. Um we all of our district partners came
to Simaran um and they they g they presented us um with their school plan and how family engagement is woven into their school plan. Um and one of the biggest things that we took away from that was communication practices. So
positive phone calls home really support um behavior. They also support building that relationship with families um and getting that parent input. Um they actually at Simmeron have really clear ex communication expectations for staff.
Um and they provide coaching and support. So um it it can be sort of daunting to think about picking up the telephone to call a a parent um especially if it's a more difficult conversation. So at Simon, they coach
their teachers. they support them to have those productive conversations and um and really and and emails and um make that a really positive interaction for our families even if it's a difficult conversation. If we can go to the next
slide. Um I love this quote um because it really talks about um the impact of successful partnerships with families and the research. Um, as I mentioned before, the outcomes for students are are much greater when we have really
successful partnerships in place. Um, and teachers um have expectations and support to really be able to meet that. The next slide will show um some some promising partnership practices and
um ways that Simmeron um has implemented these um these practices. So every year this Colorado Department of Education publishes their promising partnership practice guide and it's a collection of practices from across the
state that really helped to support um professionals in the field who are implementing FCP um who are working with parents and it's been fantastic. We've had several um practices published uh
over the years and it's been the feedback has been wonderful. Well, Simon Middle School got picked up by the Colorado Education Initiative um after their pro promising partnership practices was highlighted um and so it was a huge celebration for Simmeron um
because they're doing such great work. So, we're going to take a moment to hear from them how what this looks like and what communication practices they have in place. Thanks, Amy. My name is Chris Zimmerman. I'm the principal of SimRA Middle School in Parker, Colorado. My name is Jess
Ramanetta and I'm the assistant principal here at Simron Middle School. We're here to talk to you about promising practice around family Amy, I can't hear it. We start with really the transition between elementary and middle and end
with middle and high school at the middle school level. And we do this by starting that transition before parents and students even get into the classroom. We meet with the teachers and the schools in the elementary level to get to know the students at a deeper level and to get the information so we
can place students correctly when they come here. We also start with our coffee talks the spring before our school starts. Coffee talks are a way for parents to get acclimated to the school and get information. But the best part about coffee talks is we have student
tours within the building. We have real students in a real school environment walking parents around and getting that feel for how school is going to be on a day-to-day basis. Once we start school, we have the beginning of the school night where parents are able to come in,
meet the teachers, greet them, see the environment, start to really build that relationship with students. We also talked about some pretty tough topics with the principal around parenting middle school students and communication. These topics include
stuff like social media attendance. Parenting in this screen age is so difficult right now. And so we have some of those conversations that help parents through their parenting with sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade. And then lastly, we like to train our
teachers around communication. In some of the resources, you'll see our handbook. We try to do a handbook session every year where we go deep into communication. As you know, communication is something that you could always do right and never get it right. And so, we like to train our
teachers with examples and activities that prepares them to communicate with students and parents. Next, we'll talk about some ongoing communication that Simaron provides each year. The first thing we do is we centralize all of our communication around a theme. Every
year, we have a different theme. This year's theme is believe. So, as we communicate to families and students and teachers, we're going to keep in mind that everything we do is because we believe we can do what's best for our students and our families. The second thing we do is we provide weekly staff
communication. You'll notice in our resources, we gave an example of this. We want to make sure that our staff is as prepared as possible for all the upcoming things that might come up the next week. We make sure to bullet and highlight big sections that we want people to be mindful of. And we know
that our teachers feel most supported this way and they communicate how much they appreciate our ability to provide this every week. The second thing we do is we provide bimonthly communication in the same format to our families. We want to make sure that our families are involved with everything that we're
doing here at Simron as well as things that are happening at our elementary and high school locations. So we make sure that we provide our communication in a way that is super short, very detailed, minimal amount of words as possible. And
again, we want to make sure we bold and highlight very important pieces so that no one at any point in our community feels left out or that they miss communication. We've seen some really big impacts as we have started to go down this route of really intentional communication strategies within our
school. We have seen the impact with our families because they feel more connected not just to their kids when they come home from school but they feel connected to the school. Our staff also has seen a big difference. A while back when we didn't intentionally look at
communication staff would get multiple emails from multiple people and as you all know our emails can stack up pretty quickly. By intentionally putting some of these strategies in place, like Jess said, it becomes a little bit more manageable and they can focus on their relationships with students and parents
to really thrive in their classrooms. And then lastly, our students feel connected because of this communication as well. When they go home and they're able to have those conversations with their parents or when they're in the classroom having conversations and building the relationships with the
teachers, it makes them feel more connected with school. Our students self-reported that 90.1% of our students at Simron feel connected. This is important because when kids feel connected, they learn. Thank you, Amy.
So, as you can see, um, our Simron, um, middle school has some really amazing practices in place to support both families and educators to really come together to bridge those gaps and support students appropriately. Um, and
I have a few of those listed here. Um, one of our favorite things, too, is our transition breakfast with our English language development um, students. And it's just a time to really celebrate um that transition to um from elementary to middle and then middle to high and
connect with our families so that they can really walk in the shoes of their students to see that all the amazing support that they're that they're receiving from their teachers. Um and then um of course their staff and family newsletters. One thing I would point out is that their staff and family
newsletter is a little different. they um really highlight um their their sta their their staff on a personal level like what are they interested in? What do they like? What are some hobbies? Um things like that so people can get to know them a little bit better um to
really build that connectedness within the school. So and of course you know the the the the important topics um and events that are happening as well. But I just that that is um really helpful to highlight. So uh we can go to the next
slide. Um so I think this is important that the the the vision and mission around Simmeron um and their leadership team shows really how committed they are to supporting and modeling um partnerships with families. again just
just like um uh Sierra Middle School they are really supporting um teachers and families to come together and come together um with that partnership lens. It's become a part of the fabric of how they just do business um so that family
school community partnerships isn't something extra that we do. It's how we how we operate um going forward. Um and that collaboration as you can see is incredibly important. All right. So on this next
slide it talks about um kind of how rethinking how we think about family school community partnerships. Sometimes this idea of well if they care they'll show up is out there. Sometimes it's well um parents some parents are just
too busy or um or maybe they um have you know u challenges in getting to the school sometimes. Um I know as a busy working parent myself um I I experience that sometimes too. But I'm always there for my students and I'm always talking
to them about how how they're doing. Right. When we start to think about family, school, and community partnerships, um, and we relate it to a space launch or a rocket launch, it starts to make more sense because it really has to be everyone coming
together in order to plan, implement, and complete the mission or plan, implement, and do family, school, and community partnerships so that it becomes not it moves our system from silos to a full system. Um and it
becomes part of just how we do business. Um working together throughout the year um on the shared mission with families and educators um really helps the to improve student outcomes in terms of academics and well-being. So support
every kid in reaching their goals. Um these are some ideas for partnering with your school your child's school. probably are aware of the school accountability committee, the district accountability committee, the PTAs, volunteering
um and those traditional ways of engaging. Um but also consider providing teachers with information about your child. If they don't ask, you can you can share information with them. um share your goals and hopes and dreams for your child and how teachers might be
able to connect with your child to start building that relationship to help them gain a love of reading for example or um you know really put forth the effort in a science class. Um, so bottom line is it takes a lot of coordination and collaboration from everyone to launch
student success and we're so grateful um for our parents in Douglas County um as we um support our our child's our students learning. So thank you for being amazing partners in that. Uh, you're muted, Amy. Myself, I
will. Sorry. Let me just uh get myself organized here for a second again. Okay, we're not sharing screen anymore. Um, let's see. Okay, we we have a few questions here, so let me um kind of go through them here. So, um, one question
is um this is on an earlier slide. I think it might have been one that Sarah actually shared, but is a four um on the scale, you know, considered an A or considered an A+ or how does that um how does that play into things? You
know, I think yeah, so I think if you're looking at how do how do the numbers translate to grades? Um I think that's a whole more deeper conversation around middle school um assessment grading philosophy. But um the quick and dirty answer would be yes, a four would be
like an A. Um so and I'm sure that Sarah would have a lot more to say about that. Yeah, I'm sure she would. Um and if somebody So this is another question. If somebody had a you know really great idea um for their school community, what would your
suggestion be for? Who should they, you know, present that idea to? Would it be a teacher, the principal, you? Yeah. Um, please, please, please reach out to me. Um, reach out to the principal. It depends on um what what the idea might
be and who might be involved. Um, if it's a school level idea, reach out to the teacher or the um principal. Um, if it's something for the district, reach out to me. I'm always happy to um to support families in implementing different ideas um that support our
students well-being and and outcomes. Perfect. And we'll um make sure to include you know your contact information um in this as well um when we post this on our parent university page. So if anybody does have a question they can they can reach out to you directly. Um another question here I
think this is regarding um the grading scale again. So this might be more of a Sarah question but um for you know a special education learner would they also be on a one two three four type of a academic progress? Is it a different system? Is it Yeah. I think it depends
on the child honestly. Um I think that and I can't speak to all I I can't speak to it broadly, but I know from experience that our educators really work to differentiate those um um for what kids need. And so I think that if
some students need a lot more support with meeting those expectations around behavior because of other challenges while other students on an IEP might be able to meet those expectations just fine. So I think the response is just that it needs to be a conversation with
the case manager and teacher um and principal to find out what those expectations are for your child. Thank you. Um, and then one last question. Um, would you say, you know, with regards to the to the FCP or um,
you know, great ideas happening in schools, does it typically start with a a parent or does it sometimes start with a student or does it start with a staff member or a mix of all? Yeah, a mix of Well, I would love it to be more of a
mix of all. So, if you have an idea for um something that's going really well and a bright spot we should visit, please, please, please, I should have put this in my presentation, let us know because we would love to go and highlight that school and celebrate the great work that they're doing and then also be able to share those practices
with other schools um to be able to learn and grow those practices as well. So, please reach out to me. I would love feedback on where we should look next. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I love that so much. just the concept of the bright spot visit because it is inspiring. I
know, you know, um I had the the pleasure of attending a bright spot visit at a um school and I was just blown away by the work that they're doing and some of the other, you know, teachers and principles in the room were as well. So, it's just so inspiring to, you know, have that aha moment where
it's like, oh gosh, well, we could implement a similar, you know, concept in our school. So, it's it's really um wonderful to celebrate and inspiring to others um to see that. Absolutely. We've now visited an elementary, two middle schools, and a high school. So, we're
looking to branch out um in order to capture um even more practices um and and be able to share those. And with having so many district leaders in in the um in that room, we're then able to go out and say, "Hey, to our teams, these are some things that we saw that
were working really well. let's let's take this over here and and start this with our staff as well. So that's really the the benefit of that and then we start to take it even wider. Um things like this where we get to share um the great things that our schools are doing.
Perfect. And then would you um I know next year is year four I'm assuming. Will there be a new a new focus for next year? There will be. And so we're we'll be talking about to our um it's really going to be guided by our strategic plan just like everything else. And so we'll
take a look at where that is and how we can align to um the strategic plan in that way for the FCP collaborative as well. Very cool. I just it's amazing um you know just the work that the FCP um collaborative and and and some of the things that the schools are doing is
just incredible and so inspiring. So, it's a perfect perfect endcap to our parent university year um you know in in celebrating celebrating our schools and our communities um especially with staff appreciation around the corner um in
just a couple short weeks. So, um I just again, you know, Becky, thank you so much for your time tonight um and sharing about the FCP and the FCP collaborative um within DCSD. And I know Sarah had to to leave a little bit early. So, thank you to Sarah Curto as well, principal of Sierra Middle School.
Um just an incredible um presentation. So, we will again post this on our parent university web page um a little bit later in the week and then this will go out to all of our um those in our community um by Friday. So, again, thank you. Thank you um to our um sponsor HCA
Health1 Skyidge. Um they sponsored parent university all year and we couldn't do it without them. Um, and then we will be sharing a survey out to our community um, to really help guide what parent university looks like next year as this is meant for you, our parents, um, what information you want,
what topics you want us to to cover. So, we really um, it's driven by you and and we want want to hear your voice. So, thank you for just taking a minute to fill out that survey when you get it in your inbox. Um, send us your suggestions. That's what that's what we're here for. So, thank you for taking
the time tonight to join us and can't believe it, but we'll see you um at the 202526 school year in September. Thank you. Have a great night.