3rd Compact
Parental Involvement
The third compact, with the Washoe County School District and the Washoe Education Association, began January 2003 to improve parental involvement in schools through five elements:
- 1. Increased number of parent volunteer hours
- 2. Increased attendance at parent conferences
- 3. School participation in the National PTA certification program involving parent involvement
- 4. Professional development for education professionals to better utilize parent volunteers in their classrooms and schools
- --WEA & WCSD held parental involvement trainings for every school May 2004
--Same parental involvement template was used in the No child Left Behind reporting process
- 5. Production and distribution of a “Best Practices” booklet on parental involvement
- --Compendium of best practices was compiled and distributed to every school fall 2005
This compact was completed summer 2005. A major focus of the compact resulted in the WCSD and the WEA as integral members of the Parental Involvement Council established by the Board of Trustees to coordinate all parental involvement activities and help implement the Parental Involvement Strategic Plan. The National Education Associaiton recognized this compact as the first cooperative model in the nation.
Stewardship following the compact, resulted in the Parental Involvement Council receiving over 16,000 parent surveys returned in 20007 with feedback on what’s working or not working to involve them—Including their ideas for improvement. Based on the survey results, action plans have now been implemented at every school. TMT’s indicator: community-wide involvement in education—which measures parental involvement through both a survey and parent-teacher conference attendance—has steadily improved following this compact.
• Each school brought their plans to increase the number of parent volunteer hours, including what worked best in the past, to parental involvement trainings held spring 2004, where different approaches were brainstormed to get more parents involved
- • Professional development to better utilize parent volunteers in their classrooms and schools was completed at every school May 2004; and the same parental involvement template was then used in the No Child Left Behind reporting process
- • Increased attendance at parent conferences and school participation in the National PTA certification program involving parent involvement
- • Production and distribution of a “Best Practices” booklet on parental involvement was compiled and distributed to individual sites for the fall 2005 school year
For more information on the Parental Involvement Compact, contact:
Elaine Lancaster, Executive Director, Washoe Education Association,