PCW Best Practices

Welcome by Kate Morin, Head of Upper School at Stone Ridge
Welcome and Calendar Review – Betsy Mandel, President, PCW

TOPIC: PARENT NETWORKING
Presentations and discussion of the ways that schools provide for parents to participate in their school communities and to connect and communicate with each other.

NOTE: Please send an email request to ParentsCouncil@verizon.net for copies of parent networking practices from these PCW member schools: Fourth Presbyterian, Gonzaga, Holton-Arms, National Cathedral, Potomac, Sidwell, St. Andrews, St. Stephen St. Agnes and Washington International School.

Presentation
Cathy Horvath – National Cathedral School – Parent Peer Groups
NCS has a committee called “school life” to enhance the life of students, parents and faculty. Leaders are selected from a list of volunteers from the parent community or recommendations made by outgoing Peer Group leaders. There are two Parent Peer Leaders in each grade who organize grade level Parent Peer Meetings, who serve on the “school life” committee. There are two or three meetings per grade per year. Topics include developmental and social issues. These meetings are meant to be a resource for parents and help to build community with the NCS parents. Sometimes the Parent Peer Meeting agenda compliments current curriculum or a larger school program.
These meetings have one of the following:

• Outside speaker or a specialist from within the school faculty.
• Group discussion with the parents on a specific topic which is facilitated by the Peer Group leader.
• Program to compliment what is going on at the school.

There is always someone from the school faculty/staff attending these meetings. NCS believes it shows “good faith” and that these meetings are a constructive venue.

Parent Peer Leaders are given a handbook at the beginning of the school year which explains the purpose of the group, logistics of planning the meetings, suggested topics, and a report form for Peer Group leaders to fill out after each meeting to include attendance, speaker information, summary of how meeting went, do’s and don’ts for these meetings, etc. These handbooks also include the topics discussed at the previous years meetings as well as a list of school-offered parent programs to facilitate in the planning of the Peer meetings. This committee does have a small budget to pay a nominal speaker fee if needed ($100 - $200). Most meetings draw about 20 – 30 parents. Attendance is to be better when a specific topic advertised.

The handbook also addresses how to deal with the issue of confidentiality. It is up to the individual Peer Group leaders to reinforce the importance of confidentiality at each meeting. Nothing formal is signed by the attendees.

Presentation
Kim Weinberg -The Potomac School – Parent Forums

Parent Forums are to get parents together to talk about social and developmental issues. The Forums are held for grades K – 12. There are 2 events per year, one in fall, one in spring. One person from a school division is at each meeting – they can help answer questions on behalf of the administration. K – 6th grade holds one meeting in the morning and the other in the evening. Seventh- 12th – meetings are in the evening (have tried morning and evening and evening meetings have much better attendance). Meetings are held off site – this is a logistical decision as traffic is limited on the campus, and it promotes openness with the parents in attendance. Chairs are arranged in a circle so everyone can see each other. Meetings run approximately 2 hours with the first 15 minutes being social. Food and drinks consist of pretzels and water (always had too much food in the past).

All meeting facilitators are trained together and have a very structured way to run the meeting. Training the facilitators really helps to keep the meetings on track – there are clear guidelines on how each meeting should be run. “These meetings are not a place to solve problems” but a place to talk and exchange information.
In order to increase attendance and effectiveness of these Forums they now have two facilitators per grade. Potomac has diversified the facilitators, one the parent of a boy, the other a parent of a girl, and try to recruit Dads. K – 6th grade the parents facilitators don’t have children in the same homeroom. The biggest challenge is getting parents to volunteer for facilitator positions. Potomac uses word of mouth to increase participation.

Potomac currently sends out EVITES four weeks prior to the meeting to all parents’ emails – these emails come directly from the school. Room parents follow up after the EVITE with phone calls to increase attendance. Regarding confidentiality: it’s ok to talk about general topics not specifics. If parents want additional information they are encouraged to follow up with facilitator after the meeting. Facilitators discuss topic ideas with the administration as well and a wrap up with them on how the meeting went and if anything important came out of the meeting.

Presentation
Mary Cohen – Holton Arms – Coffees/Grade Level Gathering

Holton has no formal Parent Peer groups, however they do have many formal and informal gathering for the parents to get together and discuss various issues.
The do have Grade Representatives who are key to communicating with the parent body. There are two to three representatives per grade.

Most classes have Class Coffees, one in the fall and the other in the spring. Most coffees are held on campus after morning drop off. Some times a speaker is scheduled, other times it is more of an informal meet and greet for the parents. When a speaker is scheduled it is usually someone from the faculty chosen to speak on a specific topic, i.e. the school nurse, division heads, etc.

Parent Socials – These are evening events held for the parents in each grade. Lower School socials tend to be very well attended, however, attendance falls off as the grades progress, with the exception of 7th grade where a new class of students is added. The Upper School has parent potluck events that are tied to school events like an alcohol symposium or college night. Each family brings a dish to share and the potluck is held prior to the event. These are very well attended.

There are curriculum-based events such as Greek Day, which bring the parents out, and they are able to socialize in a very informal setting. There are also all school or division specific speakers that bring the parents together for a formal presentation.

BREAK OUT SESSIONS
After the General Meeting and presentations from three Parents Council of Washington member schools, the group broke into three break out sessions made up of representatives from various Lower schools, Middle Schools and High Schools.

Lower School Break Out Session

Conversation ensued regarding different programs at the schools to foster better Parent Communication and Networking. The consensus was that at the Lower School Level, fewer social activities were needed because parents were still very involved with playmates, birthday parties, etc.

Networking programs cited were:

• Onsite childcare and “no homework” nights to encourage attendance at Parent Socials
• Weekly newsletters
• Early Bird Coffees for working parents before work
• Buddy system with other grades
• Exercise class after drop off for parents
• School provides speaker with social time afterwards
• Volunteering – still number 1 way to meet other parents

Additional ideas offered:

• Grade specific message boards, like a parent portal
• Facebook groups
• Socials with other Parents (and Administrators half of the time so parents feel free to talk)

Other points made:

• Remember to include working parents. Give them ways to help so they still feel connected to the school.
• Size of school makes a difference
• Focus on age groups – important to make whatever you’re doing relevant to the most people

Middle School Break Out Session

The Headmaster’s wife at Fourth Presbyterian School described a series of coffees held in their home focused on the following issues: 1. What do you value most in the school? 2. What deserves attention? 3. What are the broad external issues that will have an impact on the school? They had 12 coffees. The same issues came up over and over in each one. They got an exceptionally good turnout of parents – about 80%. She attributes this in part to the fact that they gave parents 12 choices of times that they could show up, some in the AM and some in the PM. She noted that the needs of a young school are different than those of older schools. She also noted the advantage of having members of the administration present at parent networking events makes it feel like a partnership and less the us vs. them mentality.

Sidwell Friends School has a parent peer group program, which consists of very informal programs intended as social, age-appropriate discussions of what’s going on with the kids. They struggle to get good parent participation in these programs. They have attempted to increase participation by holding the peer group meeting on the same night as a dance so that people can come to the meeting after dropping their kids off at the dance. EVITE invitations also help in increasing attendance because the invitation makes public who is coming and acts as peer pressure for parents to attend. Sidwell finds that generally fewer people respond than actually attend. They also find that the personal touch – a phone call from a fellow parent – also serves to increase attendance. They have found that these programs serve an extremely useful function for parents who are new to the school.

Sidwell also has a program called the “Friendly Dozen” which is a dinner for parents at someone’s home that only 12 families are invited to. This makes it easier to host since it doesn’t involve so many people and is a more intimate gathering for parents. The class parents give out a list of dates to parents and parents sign up for a date that is most convenient for them. Then the class parents divide up the names of parents by the date that they chose and assign each group to a host family who sends them an invitation. When parents go to the dinner they do not know who else is going to be there.

Maret does a similar program of parent potluck dinners. They make sure that they do them in geographically diverse locations so that parents have options of which location is easiest for them to get to.

Stone Ridge offered a litany of parent networking programs that they sponsor at the school. They include a mother/daughter liturgy; a father/daughter breakfast; a father’s day field day; an Easter bowl; an auction; holiday decorating; a multi-cultural celebration; a festival for incoming parents; parent peer group meetings run by the middle school counselor; and parent coffees every Thursday at the school where people can stop by and chat (held once a month in the Head of School’s office). There is a Director of Parent Relations from Stone Ridge that attends all the Parent Association meetings.

Green Acres School has a new family liaison for each class who sends out personal emails to all new families. In addition they previously did programs called Donuts with Dads and Muffins with Moms but changed this to Pastries with Parents in order to make kids in single parent households feel more comfortable.

Barnesville School does a program for parents called “Grab and Go” or “Grab and Gab.” This is an informal, quick program where parents just drop by to chat with one another. They also sponsor grade level coffees, coffees with the Head of School, new family liaison emails about “what to expect,” a parenting book club facilitated by a parent educator from the Parent Education Program, and “Timely Topics” which is a speaker program where specialists are brought in on topics of interest to parents.

Sandy Spring School has meetings about learning differences for parents once a month with staff at the school.

Holy Trinity has a variety of ways to get parents together such as morning coffees. One innovation they are trying is a blog for parents. At first they permitted anonymous posting. However, they found that this invited inappropriate complaints about particular teachers. It is now password restricted and they no longer permit anonymous posting in order to avoid this type of misuse of the blog.

Upper School Breakout Session

Holy Child has student directed programs. The administration is always invited to each of these events and the parents seem very comfortable with them attending.

Washington International School holds meetings/potlucks off campus at someone’s home. No one from the school administration attends however; there is a parent facilitator. The parents want these meetings to feel more private and should any important issues arise the Parent Association President can go to the administration with those concerns. Meetings are done by grades. Attendance can vary but seems to be highest with the Lower School parents. Meeting attendees eventually begin to feel like ”one big family”. Morning programs are not as successful as many families have two parents that work.

Landon School has both a Mothers and a Fathers Club – both Clubs hold separate meetings as well as have a few joint events with speakers. These joint events tend to be very well attended. Most are in the evening with a formal presentation. The Mothers Club and Fathers Club hold most of their meetings on campus in the morning, after drop-off but have made one of their meetings in the evening. The Head of School is always in attendance at these meetings and usually gives a brief “state of the school” presentation. Various faculty and students (when appropriate) also come and present at these meetings. Landon also has several events that allow for informal socializing with the parents. These include grade level socials, potlucks, sport team dinner as well as a Parenting Class run by the Upper School counselor.

Communication

Holton Arms School went paperless a few years ago. They now have a weekly e-newsletter from the school. It is calendar based and has comments from the head of school. Once a month there is a division specific newsletter sent out via email. The grade representatives send email reminders. There is a “bulletin board” on the home page that has division specific information.

Bullis has the “Blackboard” program for teachers to communicate to the parents what they are doing.

Stone Ridge sends out an “e-blast” from the Head of School to the parent community. There are division specific pages, password protected, on the homepage. Room parents send out reminders via email or Google groups.

Holy Child has a communications director, who is also a parent, who sends out a weekly newsletter via email as well as e-blasts.

St. Albans sends out via email a monthly newsletter, blast emails, and room parents send out additional information to the parents.

Landon now posts semester grades on-line. Room moms do most of the communication. Division heads send weekly emails with comments from the division heads and a calendar of upcoming events. There are also lots of signs on campus to advertise upcoming events. These are very effective reminders for the parent/student community.

Washington International School found there were too many emails being sent out to parents by too many different groups. The school decided to re-evaluate how many email get sent out. They now try to get out most of the information in twice monthly newsletter