Schools Community Involvement Initiatives

Gathering Data and Describing Partnership

North Miami Beach Senior High School is a multicultural institution comprising students from different racial backgrounds (Stinson et al., 2011). The school recognizes the importance of community involvement in supporting student learning and achievement. As a result, the school has established two different programs that target the involvement of parents/families and the larger community respectively. As evident in the previous analysis, the parents/families program seems to be more effective than the program targeting the larger community. In this regard, the school needs to redesign the current program to enhance the involvement of the larger community to support student achievement. This paper proposes measures that the school can utilize to strengthen this program to integrate community resources towards better student learning and achievement.

Part 1 – Assess Your Current Reality

PTSA NMB is a community engagement program implemented established at North Miami Beach Senior High School. This program has played a critical role in enhancing student learning and outcomes as it promotes the involvement of parents and family members in their children’s learning. PTSA NMB helps improve student learning and outcomes at the school by providing resources to support parental involvement in the learning process (North Miami Beach Senior High School, 2012). In addition, this program has helped create a network through which external stakeholders (parents and family members) engage in learning programs/processes and support the children.

While this program has played an essential role in improving student learning at the school, low academic progress remains a major issue. Currently, students at North Miami Beach Senior High School are making far less academic progress compared to similar students in the State of Florida (Great Schools, 2021). This implies that students in this school begin at a low academic point and end up falling behind their peers. The significantly low academic progress of students in the school is evident in the low test scores. Currently, the school is ranked 9,220 in the National Rankings in terms of how well it prepares students and their performance on state-required tests (College Board, 2018). The school is placed in the bottom half of all schools across the state for overall state-required tests.

Based on the school year results for the academic year 2017-2018, the percentage of students achieving proficiency in Math at North Miami Beach Senior High School is 25% (Public School Review, 2019). This was significantly lower than the state average of 58%. Moreover, those achieving reading proficiency in language arts or reading is 32%, which was lower than Florida’s average of 55%. At the same time, the school has a higher student-teacher ratio of 20:1 while the State of Florida’s level is 16:1.

These statistics and trends indicate that students at North Miami Beach Senior High School are experiencing problems relating to academic progress. Despite measures undertaken by the school to enhance their learning and programs, they are falling behind their peers as they begin at a lower academic point/level. Consequently, these students experience challenges relating to annual academic improvement and college readiness measures. Therefore, North Miami Beach Senior High School needs to adopt measures that would help enhance the students’ year-over-year academic outcomes and college readiness.

To realize students’ academic improvement and improve their college readiness, the school should enhance the involvement of various stakeholders in enhancing student learning and outcomes. Michael, Dittus & Epstein (2007) notes that family and community involvement in schools is linked strongly to better student achievement and school attendance as well as improved school programs and quality. In this regard, the proposed partnership for the school is a School-Community Partnership Program through which various stakeholders are involved in the learning process and programs for the children. This partnership will enhance collaboration between the school and parents, families or community members resulting in more support to students that helps improve academic performance and college readiness. The goals of this partnership include enhancing collaboration between stakeholders, providing more resources and support to children, and providing career mentorship to students. The program will be led by the school principal in collaboration with parents under the parent-teacher association.

Part 2 – Vision

The vision of the partnership is to enhance students’ year-over-year academic achievement and college readiness. Through the achievement of this vision, the partnership will help address the current problem of low academic progress among students at the school. As parents, families, and community members collaborate, they provide more resources and support to students resulting in better academic performance. Such collaboration will help ensure that learning takes place within and outside the school environment and enhance the availability of learning resources to students. The partnership will also enhance the availability of necessary support to students, which will help them navigate challenges that are likely to slow their academic progress and achievement. Moreover, educators will easily identify challenges facing students and work with parents, families, and community members to design measures to address these issues at home and in the learning environment.

Part 3 – Action Steps

The effectiveness of the new partnership will be determined through examining some measurable goals from time to time. The first measurable goal for the partnership is to increase the percentage of students achieving proficiency in Math to 45% within the first year and 70% within three years. The second goal is to increase the percentage of students achieving proficiency in language arts/reading to 50% and 75% within the first and third year of implementation respectively. The third goal is to improve the ranking of North Miami Beach Senior High School to the top 50% of all schools in the State of Florida within two years.

The implementation of the partnership will begin with creating a brief overview of the proposed collaboration, its objectives, and strategies and activities. Secondly, the proposal will be shared with the school’s principal who will liaise with the school board for approval. Once the proposal is approved, necessary changes will be made to the existing programs and communicated to parents and families by the school’s administration. In addition to using the school’s administration, information regarding the program will be communicated during parent-teacher workshops and through community awareness initiatives within and outside the school. Since the implementation of the partnership will involve strengthening the current programs, existing resources in these initiatives will be utilized for the proposed program. This implies that there will be no need for additional funding for the proposed partnership.

Part 4 – Strategies and Activities

One of the strategies/activities for this partnership is volunteering, which involves inviting local individuals, leaders, and professionals in the community to visit classes and speak on their careers (International Survey Associates, 2016). These individuals can also speak about their respective professions during Career Days. They can also get involved by providing enrichment opportunities to students before and after school. The second strategy/activity is for parents, families, and community members to provide mentorship to students in different fields of study or careers (Garza & Kuri, 2014). This strategy would involve career-oriented externships and career mentorship initiatives by community professionals to help enhance students’ learning and outcomes. Such mentorships can take place in workshops and engagement events like music and art programs.

Part 5 - Evidence Base

The establishment of community engagement programs in school is a time-consuming, demanding, and costly initiative, but with significant benefits in terms of improvement of student learning and outcomes. According to Garza & Kuri (2014), partnerships with community members involve a series of activities and meetings between the different stakeholders. These meetings and activities are time-consuming, demanding, and costly as they explore different aspects of the partnerships. The various stakeholders involved in this process examine the needs of the students, current programs, and their effectiveness to ensure that the initiatives achieve their respective goals and objectives. As a result of the series of meetings and activities involving various stakeholders, the process is relatively complex but valuable (Wang, Lai & Wang, 2016). Moreover, existing literature shows that the complexity of this process is linked to the need for active engagement of different stakeholders, community-school relationships, and input into community activities.