View Danielle Cronin's Parent and Community Engagement presentation at the LookOut 2011 International Conference

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Parents University

[Source Article: http://www.rgj.com/article/20110830/NEWS02/108280360/1002 by Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Ben Miller]

The Washoe County School District's strategic plan seeks to address three key objectives: graduating more students, fostering parent engagement and jump-starting early childhood education. The parent engagement strategy involves a Parents University initiative.

There will be more than 220 Parents University classes at various locations around the community provided by a consortium of community organizations.

All classes will be free to parents or a child's guardian, and child care and interpretation in Spanish will be provided for every class.





 D'Lisa Crain, administrator of family school partnerships, said the district hopes to have an average of 40 parents in each class.



"We understand that parents are busy these days and have conflicting schedules and have a lot of responsibilities, so we might have 25 parents in one class and 200 in another; there's really no way to predict that," Crain said.

The classes will cover a wide variety of topics, including health, Internet safety, parenting, financial literacy, drug and alcohol prevention, bullying and how to earn a GED.

Crain said the district has always had classes for parents, but that they haven't been organized in this way previously.


"Many community-based organizations and the school districts have taught classes before, but they haven't been organized in a comprehensive catalogue," Crain said. "The Parent University pools all those resources together so parents can know the full offering of resources that are available."



Among the community organizations involved are the Children's Cabinet, Nevada State Parent Information and Resource Center at the Education Alliance, Northern Nevada Literacy Council, Nevada Parents Encouraging Parents, Nevada Parent Teacher Association, Food Bank of Northern Nevada, Join Together Northern Nevada, Tune in to Kids, Truckee Meadows Community College, United Way of Northern Nevada and the Sierra, Boys and Girls Club and GT Parent Connection, among others.Maria Fernandez, a coordinator for family school partnerships said catalogs in English and Spanish will be mailed to every home in mid-­September, and a website is being developed for launch about the same time.

This edition of ParentNet looks at a successful strategy for Connecting Home & School Learning in Secondary School - ‘Patrician Partners in Literacy’ program. This program was founded on the belief that parents are the first teachers of their children and that "the home is both the beginning and foundation of all learning" and also the observation that many parents feel disengaged from the learning process after their children move to secondary education. It sought to bring parents into the school and engage them in the teaching and learning of literacy - with many exciting (and unintended) outcomes!

Download ParentNet here