Community Partnerships: Implementation Plays
- We build the capacity of the school leader to collect stakeholder input to assess schoolwide goals and needs that community partners can support on, and to identify gaps in service and resources at the school- and network-level. With this input, school leaders and families establish a school-level vision for community partnerships.
- We support and coach the school leader to create processes and infrastructure to support sourcing, tracking, communications, and evaluation of partners.
- We conduct landscape analyses of school-based and network-wide community partners, including an assessment of the conditions necessary for partners to be successful.
- We leverage relationships to identify and connect the right partners to support individual school’s service and resource gaps. We maintain a community partner database, which identifies existing partners across the network and their areas of focus. We build and strengthen relationships with these partners through 1:1 meetings, collaborative community meetings, special projects, and funding opportunities.
- We convene partners multiple times throughout the school year, including at the beginning of the year for a meet and greet with the principal; an “all hands” partner meeting in the middle of the year to recalibrate and readjust plans for the remainder of the year; and an end-of-year meeting to celebrate wins together. Convening partners helps them get to know one another and works to ensure that all stakeholders are working collaboratively to achieve common school goals.
- We ensure that school-based partners are integrated and collaborating with family engagement efforts on campus.
- We support schools in measuring the impact of community partners on campus and distribute a community partner survey to understand the nature and quality of school and partner relationships. We build the capacity of school leaders to utilize impact data to make decisions on the quality of partner programs and prioritize high-quality, sustainable partnerships.