Journal and Assignment Due Monday before 11:59 pm

Running Head: PARENT AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT PLAN

1

Parent Involvement for the 21st Century: Final Project-EDU 617

Student Name

Ashford University

Date

PARENT INVOVLEMENT PLAN 2

Parent Involvement Plan

It takes an effort in getting Parents and the Community to be involved in the education process of

students. One would say that it doesn’t come easy. In order, to have Parent and Community involvement

in the school setting to be effective, a plan is needed by the school staff to help develop positive

relationships and maintain the relationship that has been built. By having a good parent and community

relationship can make for a more enjoyable and pleasant educational and school experience for all that are

involved.

Plan Philosophy

The plan is built off the philosophy that it takes more than just one to help ensure the success of a

student but it takes a village to ensure the success of a student. For a child’s education can be influenced

by the involvement of parents and community which plays an important role in that success. As

educators, it is important that we recognize that parents play an important role in their child’s education

development and that they are a valuable resource to teachers too. This plan is created to help develop

and mold a positive relationship and involvement between parents, school, and community. With the

forming of a positive relationship it will help benefit students and families.

Aims/Goals of the Plan

The development of this plan is intended to help establish an effective positive relationship

between parents, schools and community and community organizations within the community. By

providing parents with the support through parental trainings, workshops, service learning activities and

support for students, and the establishing of the lines of communication between parents and school. This

can be possible. In order, for my plan to work the involvement of staff, parents and community members

will be needed. "Teachers, counselors, principals, health techs, school secretaries, or any other willing

staff members can fill the community outreach school coordinator role." (Hjalmarson, pg. 117). This will

be the start of a community that will be created to help keep the focus of parent and community

involvement and the increase of that involvement.

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 3

According to O’Keefe (2011), In order, to make our school succeed the help needs to come from

many parts of the community. With the help of the community and me we will be able to communicate

and connect with other organization services that are available. My intention is to increase the type of

involvement that is being created to help provide student support to help increase student success and

learning experiences. To help establish a positive relationship we will invite parents and leaders within

the community to voice their opinions on ways to help increase involvement to help maintain that

involvement. We will also be discussing positive strategies that the school can help build a positive

repour with parents and student families.

With the building of a positive relationship with parents and families it allows for the recognition

of the what their basic needs are and how to help with those basic needs. According, to Maslow’s

Hierarchy of Needs Triangle which consist of five different levels that represents the development of

physical and psychological needs. If the parental basic needs are not met they are worried more about

those needs not being met. This can result in the lack of parent involvement within the child’s education

and school. It is important to ensure that the intentions that are made are something that is going to be

accomplished in a effective way to create a positive relationship.

My goals for this plan is too have goals set into place that are measurable and achievable. Such as

establishing an effective positive relationship between parents, schools and community and community

organizations within the community. Increased involvement of parents and the involvement of the

community. Parent supports are available and set into place and provided for parents. Supports such as

parental classes/trainings, workshops, service learning activities and student supports are set into place.

“Students who have been involved in high quality service learning programs demonstrate an increased

sense of personal and social responsibility and are less likely to engage in “risk” behaviors (Abravanel,

2003). An open line of communication between parents and school has been accomplished. A committee

that consist of the involvement of parents, school staff, and community members will work together to be

effective in the increase of parent and community involvement. An effective, positive connection and

relationship will be made between parent, community, and community organizations increasing

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 4

involvement and school success through the committees focus of parent and community involvement.

The school will be successful and provide supports for students which will show an increase of student

success and learning experiences.

A positive relationship between parents and community leaders will increase the activity and

voicing of opinion of ways to increase involvement and the maintaining of that involvement. Strategies

will be set into place that helps build a positive repour between parents, student families and schools.

Parent and student families will have a positive relationship to share what basic needs are needed and still

need to be met. The school will have a positive relationship between the community and community

organizations to help provide resources to help parental basic needs. There will be an increase in parental

involvement in their child’s education and school.

School Resources

There are many types of resources that the school can use to help increase the involvement of

parents and the community. According, to Project Appleseed, (2014) “One way to start improving your

school's parent-school partnerships is by assessing present practices.”. With the use of Epstein's Six

types of involvement interactions which is: Volunteering, Parenting, Communicating, learning at home,

Decision Making, and Collaborating with the community. There are resources that can be used in each

one of these areas. Creating a welcome and personal packet that welcomes all parents to the school that

are visitors. This packet would include a list of community resources which includes a directory and

contact numbers, important school contact information, school calendar and discounts from local

business. Personal contact from teachers to parents/guardians through emails, phone calls, and home

visits. Hold a beginning of the school year open house and monthly open house for parents to meet the

teacher, other staff, tour the school and get to know and meet other parents. Offer transportation and

child care so parents can attend and be involved.

Provide support workshops for parents to gain information on child development on all age

groups and what is the appropriate expectations are for school and home. Along with parent workshops is

a partner to local community members and school staff that helps with nutrition information, health,

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 5

communication and recreational ideas. Print off ways that could help parents at home to support their

child’s learning. Send home daily, weekly or monthly folders that includes parent information, work

done, homework and information sheet that allows for parents to help monitor their child’s progress.

Provide parental access using technology that parents can check on their child’s progress, areas that they

are lacking in, and what’s going on in class and school events. Have open access to parents and

community members to make suggestions or comments in a “Suggestion Box” this can be in the school

and on the school website.

Have monthly PTA meeting to allow for parents to know what is going on in the school, district

changes, or changes that need to be made. Have a Parent Advocacy committee that allows for parents to

have an important role in decision making, safety, district policies, and community partnerships.

Encourage parent and community volunteering at school functions, events and drives. Provide a resource

for those with a language barrier to help ensure that there is parent involvement from all parents. Work

with those within the community to allow access to local resources to help parents ensure they can help

their child outside of school. Partnering with the local community organizations to help provide onsite

learning experiences and mentoring. Encourage teachers to create a community learning service project

to help those within the community and involvement. Finally, encourage those within the community to

come to school meetings, open house and those open houses to share their resources. The funding for the

use of these resources is very minimal for it would be based off school fundraising, allotted school

budgeting and community donations and community support.

Student & Parent Roles

Students can play an important role to parent and community involvement. The role that the

students have is that they can be responsible for bringing home daily, weekly, or monthly parent contact

folders. These folders contain information on what they are doing in class, graded work, homework of a

progress chart that allows for parents to monitor the progress that their child is making, areas that need

help, and other information. “Parents get involved as a result of student’ actions and imitative”

(Hjalmarson, 2011). Students can encourage their parents to attend school activities, meetings,

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 6

workshops, parent teacher conferences, volunteer, open house, school carnivals, or other school functions.

Students can share information with their parents on what they are learning in school, changes that are

being made, areas that they need help in, advocate for themselves on what their needs are. Stay focused

on what they are learning in school to help them make progress and challenge themselves to learn more.

It is important that students work together as a student advocacy committee and share ideas that would

help make the school better, what they feel needs to change, school safety, and It is the students job to

self-monitor the progress that they are making and share that information to their parents at home.

Students will be responsible for giving their parents the monthly newsletter, information about

workshops, encourage parents to attend workshops, meetings, as well as parent teacher conferences.

Students will be afforded the opportunity to participate in service learning activities that will benefit the

community. “At the same time, these students show gains in motivation to learn, resulting in higher

attendance rates and increased academic performance” (Abravanel, 2003). Students will be gaining

experience in real life situations. They will apply what knowledge that they have to the improvement of

the community or through the community project.

Parental Involvement is a key role to their child’s success in school. “When parents are

involved in children's learning, at school and at home, schools work better and students learn more”

(Project Appleseed, 2014). There are many roles that parents are responsible for. The parent is

responsible for providing the basic care, parental guidance, the development of their child and molding of

behavior. It is the role of the parent to play and active role in their child’s education. To have a positive

relationship between teacher and parent. Share information through correspondence in emails, phone

calls, letters or coming to the school. It is important for parents to have an understanding of their child’s

needs, be active in the role of helping the school to help met those needs at school and through the

community resources. Showing that they are active and interested in their child’s education. Parent

participation in activities within school/community and keeping in touch through parent conferences.

Collaborate and work together with the school, community and other parents in their interests of their

child’s education. Show that they are supportive of the school rules and policies that are set into place.

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 7

Have an, understanding of the parental rights and responsibilities to the things is related to their child’s

education. Knowledge of where those rights and responsibilities is included in the school polices and

practices. Parents need to ensure that they are provided with the education that is given to their child. To

have knowledge of how the school works and the environmental map of the school. Keep track and

monitor the progress that their child is making and understand how the assessment of the child is being

done. Being active and part of the decision-making role that involves changes in the education of their

child, interventions, programs, changes in the school and school policies. Share information through

comments or suggestions through meetings, comment or suggestion boxes, verbally or using the designed

website.

Community Roles

Schools rely on the partnership of those within the community and community organizations to

help make their school successful, support, provide resources for parents and students. Building

connections to create a positive relationship between schools, parents and the community helps meet the

needs of children by furthering the goals of the school improvement starts with effective school and

community relationships.

The community roles of involvement in schools is to work together and collaborate with the

schools to gain information on the events and activities that are happening. Attending any meetings or

functions that they are invited to. Share resources with the school that can help benefit parents, the

increase of student support, fundraisers, and basic needs. To be active through volunteering in before and

after school programs, athletic teams, and school functions. Working together with school staff and

parents in a committee that will help with the focus on the increase of parent involvement. Share any

comments or suggestions to any improvements that need to be made to make the school better or positives

that is being made and is helpful. Work with parents outside of school to help give information to help

parents with the basic needs, recreational ideas, workshops, classes, activities or learning opportunities to

increase learning experience to organizations that can provide educational support for students outside of

school. Have a understanding of the school policies and regulations that are set in place. Have an open

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 8

line of communication between the school and community. Share information with others within the

community to help create a stronger support for the school.

Actions/Events

There are many things that can help set this plan into action. Setting up and establishing a

effective Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) that leads and

supports different events that are family events which is educational and or fun events. Also keeping in

mind that different events need to be scheduled and offered at different times to help those who have a

more difficult schedule to attend. Offer activities, events, or programs that is related to help encourage

parent involvement. An example of this is tutoring secession that are daily or weekly that consists of

parent volunteers that will help assist students that needs extra support in certain areas. Parent or IEP

meetings that supports the participation of parent and student. Parent support workshops that provides

nutritional, health and other resources. Another action is to ensure and encourage parents to volunteer in

various thing such as chaperone, helping with testing and student monitoring, helping with planning,

setting and presenting events.

Communicating with parents frequently through a communication log or system that can go back

and forth between school and home. The use of classroom newsletters, classroom blog, classroom events

through sending home a classroom calendar. Frequent, check ins to see how things are going at home

questions that need to be addressed through phone calls or home visits.

Creating a welcoming warm environment that shows respect between school, parents and

community. Greeting parents in a positive way helps parents to feel that they are welcome to come to

their child’s school at any time. Respecting that the parent is an important factor to their child’s

education and involve them to be part of that process. Allow for parents to have input and a say in what is

going on at school. Be supportive of any type of parent involvement that is given by parents and not to be

judgmental on that involvement. Send out just because invites or thank you to show that you appreciate

the parent’s involvement. Ensure that parent phone calls, notes or emails are being responded in a timely

manner.

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 9

Be supportive by showing a flexibility to help accommodate parents and families. Send home

parent teacher conference information that allows for parents to be able to pick a time that works best for

them, meeting on a weekend or offer a home conference. Offer transportation or child care to help

accommodate those families that are unable to make it due to siblings or transportation. Make sure that

there are flexible office hours that allows for those to be able to come in when needed. Set PTA meetings

at times that allows for parents to attend. Offer before and after school programs that parents can be active

in and before and after school tutoring for students.

Provide a multiple variety of resources that are available to parents is an action what will help

ensure that the plan can successful. Some of these resources is an after-school way for parents to access

on the computer information on how to help their child with their homework or school work. This allows

for parents to help support their child’s education at home. Provide a afterschool help line that allows for

parents to get ahold of a resources committee member that can help direct the parent to someone within

the community to help with what they need help with. Hold parent classes or workshops that are

informational on parenting skills, ways to help at home, provides support for those parents of special

needs or learning disabilities. Provide support groups for those parents that need the extra support for

family trauma, abuse or mental health. Offer a diversity of language classes to help learn a language.

Lastly, the action of supporting parents at home through training sessions to help parents to help

their child at home with homework. Allow parents to come to the school and use the computers to help

access blogs, emails, students grade or progress, school information, tools or other types of resources.

Send home the parent contact folder to parents that includes monitoring or progress sheets and graded

work to help parents to be able to monitor areas that need help, their child’s progress and encourage them.

Evaluation of the Plan

To ensure that the plan that has been set into place is acting as a effective plan an evaluation of

the plan needs to be done. This is to ensure the increase of parent and community involvement, to

determine if there has been a drop-in involvement or has it stayed the same. This allows a review and

new look to make changes if needed to help the plan be successful. The first step is to have parents sign

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 10

in on a sign in sheet during events, activities, parent teacher conferences/meetings, volunteering during

school, when coming into the computer lab or library, workshops, programs and other school functions.

This information is put into a spread sheet to be able to compare the number of parents or community

members are those functions. Once the information is put in you will be able to graph the increase or

decrease of parent involvement over the allotted amount of time. As the information is checked on

throughout the quarters we can see the results. Another way is to assess the amount of parent

involvement that is being made through the number of logins there has been on the school site for

comments or suggestions. The number or logins in the classroom blogs can be checked both as well can

be done weekly and the numbers can be put into a program that allows for you to see the numbers.

Having parents do questionnaires, surveys or interviews to see where they are at as far as volunteering

and the involvement of the community. Being able to see an increase in student progress, if it stays the

same or drops.

Holding meetings with the committee that was created quarterly to go over the numbers and

information that was collected to see where the plan is fall in place. What changes may need to be re-

evaluated. The areas that are working and making progress. Then at the end of the year check in to see

where we had landed with progress. Sharing information that has been gathered to staff. parents and

those in the community. Will help to make the changes that is necessary for the plan to be effective.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a Parent Involvement plan has been created to help with the increase of parent

involvement. To have Parent and Community involvement in the school setting to be effective it takes

the cooperation of staff, parents and community to help develop positive relationships and maintain the

relationship that has been built. By having a good parent and community relationship can make for a

more enjoyable and pleasant educational and school experience for all that are involved. The plan was

developed on the philosophy: For a child’s education can be influenced by the involvement of parents and

community which plays an important role in that success. As educators, it is important that we recognize

that parents play an important role in their child’s education development and that they are a valuable

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 11

resource to teachers too. There are ten areas that were created these areas are what are the intentions of

the plan and what the goals are. The goals that were set into place are goals that can be measurable and

achievable. The description of what school resources are to be used to help with the increase of parent

involvement. What materials are needed, the personnel, and the amount of funding that will be needed to

use these resources. The student and parent roles are included and what those roles are and what it looks

like. What roles does the community have in the involvement of parents and what those roles would look

like is provided? There is a detailed breakdown of the actions that are to help gain and create support.

There are events that are created to help gain parent involvement and community support. Lastly, how

the plan will be evaluated to determine whether the plan is successful or needs to be evaluated. It takes

more than one to help ensure the success of a child and it takes a plan to help ensure that that help is set in

place.

INVOVLEMENT PLAN 12

References

Abravanel, S., 2003, Building Community through Service-Learning: The Role of the Community Partner

Epstein, J. (2009). Six types of involvement: Keys to successful partnerships (Links to an external

site.)Links to an external site.. Retrieved from http://nnps.jhucsos.com/nnps-model/school-

model/six-types-of-involvement-keys-to-successful-partnerships/

Griffin, D. & Steen, S. (2010). School-family-community partnerships: Applying Epstein's theory of the

six types of involvement to school counselor practice. Professional School Counseling, 13(4),

218-226. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Hjalmarson, F. (2011). Differentiated parent support: Engaging parents in unique ways to increase their

involvement in School. San Diego, CA: TurnAround Schools Publishing

O’Keefe, B. (2011). 5 Steps to better school/community collaboration. Retrieved from:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-community-collaboration-brendan-okeefe

O'Brien, A. (2012). The importance of community involvement in schools (Links to an external

site.)Links to an external site.. Edutopia Teacher Leadership.

Project Appleseed. (n.d.). Parent involvement checklist (Links to an external site.)Links to an external

site.. Retrieved from http://www.projectappleseed.org/chklst

Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/community-parent-involvement-essential-anne-obrien