Putting More School in the Community and More Community in the School

by
Sam Jackson
and
members of the
Community Support Sub-Committee
edited by
Margaret Barkley Byess

Much appreciation is due to the members of the Community Support Sub-committee of the FCCPTA Budget Committee. Lexie Ellis from Langley High School, Janet Gelb from Louise Archer Elementary School, Jack Knowles of the Mount Vernon Association of Citizens’ Associations, and Dolores Bowen, former FCPS Assistant Superintendent for Community Relations were active members who should share in the credit for great work done in preparing this report. And finally, Janet Mendis deserves kudos for contributing her professional editing skills.

Executive Summary
This paper is predicated on the assumption that sustaining broad community support for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is critically important for the continued success of our schools. As the demands on our schools and the demographic makeup of our student population change, we must ensure not only the continued provision of high quality education but also that county citizens understand the needs of our schools and continue to support them.

For the schools to retain the confidence of the public they must:

• Offer a high quality education to all students.

• Deliver education efficiently.

• Hold themselves accountable for their performance.

• Maintain a "customer" orientation responsive to the concerns of all parents.

• Foster an ongoing school-community dialogue.

This paper addresses these issues from the standpoint of increased community involvement and support. Our recommendations are focused on three different levels: first, at the School Board and the Superintendent's Office; second, within the school system itself and in the Fairfax County Council of PTAs (FCCPTA); and, third, at the local school and PTA level.

Responsiveness and Accountability (pages 3-8). 
Each school individually and the school system as a whole must be responsive to their "customers": students, parents, and other interested members of the community. We ask that the School Board take the lead in this effort by adopting as a priority an explicit commitment to improving the participation of all parents and community members. We recommend increasing public input and participation on advisory committees both to the School Board and to local schools, in the county-wide planning process, and during the budget process. We further recommend that the role of community and parent representatives on advisory committees be strengthened by providing training to members of these groups and by encouraging School Board appointees to better communicate with parents and community members in their districts. And, while we applaud the adoption of the new voicepoll technique to solicit input from the community, we also encourage using other electronic resources to obtain public input.

We affirm the importance of establishing a system of accountability that assesses the schools' accomplishments. We recommend that schools demonstrate to parents and the community their continued commitment to educational excellence by 1) exploring innovations that will control future costs, while continuing to pursue the highest standards, and 2) ensuring that individual and system performance is measured, with consequences when standards are met or not met.

County-wide Efforts to Improve Community Support (pages 8 - 14). 
There are many broad-based civic, community, and business organizations whose support is invaluable to the public schools. The work of the FCPS Office of Community Relations with these organizations is commendable, and we make several recommendations for further efforts: 1) providing "rapid response" information to citizens; 2) fostering connections with the real estate community; and 3) improving access to school documents at county libraries. With regard to the business community, we recommend 1) recruiting business partners for schools that don’t yet have them; and 2) exploring ways to develop ties to small businesses in the county. Further, we recommend the FCCPTA explore other community-school collaborations (such as community coalitions) that could foster greater understanding of the challenges and accomplishments of our public schools. We recommend that umbrella organizations within the county establish an education committee, such as that of the Mount Vernon Association of Civic Associations.

The Fairfax County Council of PTAs itself works at many levels to sustain public support for education. The FCCPTA commits itself to improving dissemination of information to and among its members, include establishing a an E-mail system which includes all PTAs, expanding the use of its web site, improving communication with its appointees to School Board advisory committees meetings, and repackaging past FCCPTA issue and policy papers. The County Council also commits to continued training of PTA and FCCPTA leaders. These activities, we believe, will strengthen our efforts to engender community support for our county's public schools.

Strengthening Ties with the Community at the School Level (pages 14 - 20). 
Most citizens feel their strongest ties to the school in their local community. Here, in particular, we must ensure that schools display their commitment to "customer" orientation, accountability, and genuine exchange of information and ideas with their community. We recommend that schools maintain a "parent-friendly" culture, particularly in the front office of each school, and adopt new methods to communicate with parents (through, for example, e-mail and fax).

We applaud the efforts of local schools to disseminate positive information about the schools to the media. By designating a media representative at each school, local PTAs may assist school personnel in distributing news stories of interest to the local community. The local PTA and school must develop stronger ties with community associations within each school's boundaries. In addition to providing concrete information to these associations, each school should invite community association members to attend school functions and to serve on school-based advisory groups.

Connecting with local community associations is one of many ways in which we can put more school in the community and more community in the schools. We identify opportunities to enhance these ties, ranging from open houses to maintaining contact with parents of school alumni. Of special concern is the need to connect with older citizens in the county, who often hold leadership positions in local and county organizations.

Continuing our Efforts to Maintain Community Support (page 20). 
This report is a preliminary effort to identify areas to address in promoting public support for public education. We do not pretend that these are the final word. Indeed, we must continue to identify "best practices" in public engagement initiatives in other communities. We hope this will be part of an ongoing effort to sustain community support for the Fairfax County Public Schools.

Putting More School in the Community
and More Community in the School

I. Introduction

The Fairfax County Council of PTAs (FCCPTA) has long believed that sustaining broad community support is an essential ingredient in the success of the public schools in Fairfax County. For years, the FCCPTA and local PTAs have worked to help our community appreciate the high quality of our public schools. We must develop strategies to reach beyond those with the closest affinity to the schools. In appealing to those who do not have children in the schools, school supporters have pointed to the relationship between the quality of schools and the resale value of residential real estate.

We must also reaffirm the value of public education in helping our county's children become economically productive adults, informed citizens and responsible parents. The consent of our communities to finance public education is part of what has been termed the "social contract," that is, the acceptance of our responsibilities as individual members of a society to pay for services that are of indirect benefit to us as individuals, but of direct benefit to our society. The maintenance of a community's commitment to the social contract is of paramount importance in the success of that community, and must not be taken for granted. Preserving that commitment depends on citizens being confident in the quality and efficiency of the services being provided, in this case, from our public schools. Thus, as the demands on our schools and the makeup of our student population change over the next decade, we must maintain our focus on both sides of the social contract--providing excellent schools and promoting community support for our schools.

There must be a renewed effort at all levels by both schools and PTAs to reach out to all segments of our community. We are all partners in this contract to ensure continued support for public investment in our schools at a level needed to maintain their high quality. We regard the following ingredients as essential for the schools to retain the confidence and support of the public:

• At the core level, the schools must offer a high quality education to all students. Although there is, and perhaps will always be, a debate over what constitutes high quality education, we believe that the Fairfax County Public Schools and the county's citizens support this principle of excellence.

• The schools must deliver education efficiently. Whether they have children in the schools or not, citizens must have a sense that their tax dollars are being spent in a cost-effective manner.

• Both in terms of the quality of education and its efficient delivery, our schools must hold themselves accountable for their performance.

• Next, the schools--from central office administrators to school custodians--must maintain a "customer" orientation that is attentive and responsive to the concerns of all parents--including those who do not regard the Fairfax County Public Schools as an unqualified success.

• Finally, there must be an ongoing school-community dialogue. Our schools must convey accurate information about themselves to every segment of the community, and there must be a genuine invitation to the community to share their ideas and concerns with the schools and their PTAs. In turn, our communities must make a good faith effort to understand the needs of our schools and staff, according them the respect they merit as professionals.

In addition to sustaining adequate funding for public education, a supportive and engaged community can contribute ideas and time to the schools. Thus supported, our school system will maintain its reputation for excellence, attracting residents and businesses to Fairfax County and thereby maintaining its tax base and the quality of life for its residents. A strong public school system is beneficial even for citizens who do not have family members attending public schools. To quote an FCPS publication, "Good Schools are Good for Everyone."

We address these issues now because the recent years of good economic growth and relatively uncontroversial budgets may have left many Fairfax residents complacent about the state of public education in the county. We are concerned that the implementation of the Standards of Accreditation (SOA)--which require the issuance of "School Report Cards" on each school next fall--may undercut public confidence in some schools. Finally, demographic trends suggest that over the next decade an older, established population, unfamiliar with the many changes in educational approach since their days in school and unaware of the greater challenges posed by the increasing diversity of our student body, will be asked to support a more needy school population.

As active PTA members who support public education in general and our Fairfax County schools in particular, we are well aware of the strengths and limitations of our individual schools, and we are well aware of the problems our schools face due to budget limitations. Although we have no "scientific" survey evidence, we believe there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction even among some active, involved parents themselves. The FCCPTA believes that we--both our PTAs and our schools--must not ignore the concerns of dissatisfied parents.

The fact that we choose to address these issues of community support is not an implied criticism of the many excellent, dedicated, and committed teachers and principals in our schools. Nor do we wish to imply in this report that we have found the best and only ways to build and sustain community support. We offer these recommendations as a way of sharing with all the many approaches to building and maintaining public support we have found in use at one school or another, at one level or another, in Fairfax County Public Schools, as well as some initiatives we have found in use in other school systems.

In this report we identify some of the areas that require attention if we are to sustain and enhance community support for public education. Although a high-quality education is necessary for that support, that topic is beyond the scope of this document. The efficiency of the school system has been addressed in many prior Fairfax County Council of PTAs (FCCPTA) documents, as well as last year's Management Review by MGT of America. Our focus here will be on the other ingredients of public support: accountability, customer orientation, and school-community dialogue.

This report is directed at three groups; the analysis and recommendations are organized in a way we hope is helpful for each of those groups. First, we identify the major initiatives that can be undertaken system-wide to enhance community support. These initiatives are directed at the School Board, Dr. Domenech, and his leadership team and focus on the themes of responsiveness and accountability. Second, we identify county-wide settings for school-community interactions and offer a number of suggestions, as well as a number of commitments from the FCCPTA, to improve support for the schools. These recommendations are aimed at the FCCPTA and FCPS central and area office staff. The third set of recommendations is directed to local schools and their PTAs. This final section addresses strategies for cultivating local school-community communication.

Not only must the school community effectively inform the public at large, but we must develop a more collaborative relationship, one that expands the role of the community in the schools and expands the role of the schools in the community. We are aware that our school principals and teachers are already overburdened, particularly now with the challenges presented by the implementation of the Standards of Learning and Standards of Accreditation. We are also aware that Dr. Domenech is proposing a number of significant changes in the organization of our schools that will further challenge our local school staff. Nevertheless, because the successful implementation of change requires a responsive and supportive community, we believe our local schools and PTAs must strive to improve their communication and interaction with all the potential partners in their local areas.

We acknowledge that our ideas may for some be just the beginning of an effort to sustain community support, while for others they may be "old news." We hope that this document will be taken as the first step in a collaborative, open, and frank discussion, occurring at all levels, of the many ways we can work together to support our schools.

II. A Responsive and Accountable School System
Citizens are more likely to support the needs of the Fairfax County Public Schools if they believe that schools are responsive to the needs of the community and are held to account for their performance. Moreover, the community will be more supportive, and understanding of the problems our schools face, if it is actively engaged in decisions about the schools. One commentator has observed:

A well-established phenomenon in contemporary American life is the growing dependence on experts and professionals to solve our social problems. A striking consequence of this development has been the loss of real dialogue among most citizens about issues that are significant to the vitality of the nation. Though leaders and experts spend years and years working through difficult problems, relying on serious dialogue as an approach to crafting solutions, they rarely invite ordinary citizens into their deliberations. Rather once they have arrived at a consensus, they present their list of solutions to citizens and expect the country to "sign on." When they encounter public resistance, they are bewildered and turn belatedly to "public engagement," the activity that appears today on every expert's agenda.

Public engagement, if it is to be successful, must be more than just another public relations strategy. Genuine opportunities for public input and participation in school decision-making are critical to the continuation of community support for the schools. Unfortunately, many citizens, including parents of schoolchildren, have an image of FCPS as a huge bureaucracy that is indifferent and unfriendly to its patrons and concerned only with the preservation of a tenured profession. The national media attention on the poor quality of public education in the United States today--however inapplicable that judgment may be for Fairfax County-- has had its impact on public perceptions. The FCCPTA believes the schools must combat this image from within, first, by assuring that they have developed a customer-friendly orientation, and, second, by developing a system of accountability.

A. Responsiveness
The school system as a whole, from top to bottom, must make "customer orientation" an important priority. This effort must start with the School Board and end with every school employee. From the School Board on down, there are a myriad of advisory and planning groups that involve parents, community and staff. These groups are important links in the community support structure of our schools, and should be nurtured. Where citizens are engaged in the planning and implementation of education, they are more likely to feel a commitment to the success of the public schools. FCPS should identify and explore every opportunity for increased public input, awareness and participation.

Just as the School Board has made a commitment to understanding the diverse learning needs of students and providing programs that meet those needs, so too the School Board should make a commitment to ensuring the participation of community members from all the diverse communities that exist within Fairfax County. FCPS staff leaders should also commit to improving opportunities for input and participation from all our community members as part of a system-wide effort to broaden participation. Diversity is one of the assets of living in Fairfax County.

It is critical that the School Board and FCPS clarify the role of citizens appointed to various advisory committees. School Board appointees sometimes seek input from the community, but sometimes simply speak only for themselves. When appointees simply speak for themselves, they risk undercutting the credibility of the advisory committee and limit the public's access and contribution of ideas to their elected School Board members. We believe that non-staff appointees should be expected to represent the community, in order that a wide variety of views can be considered in the decision-making process.

Recommendations
1. School Board Advisory Committees. The FCCPTA believes that these groups are not being used as effectively as they could be. The FCCPTA recommends that a parent or community member chair the committee and that each group receive training at the beginning of each new term of office on the role and responsibilities of staff, community and parent representatives on these groups. During a meeting in March with Dr. Domenech he agreed to establish an orientation session for advisory committees, effective in the fall of 1998. We also suggest that School Board members can demonstrate their commitment to more meaningful citizen participation on these committees by regularly communicating with their appointees. Further, we recommend that School Board members encourage their appointees to communicate with PTAs and other interested community organizations in their district's schools, to ensure that these appointees represent the views of their communities—and not just their own personal opinions. To facilitate the process of advisory committee appointees communicating with local schools to solicit input, the School Board and advisory committee chairs should formalize some communication channels (e.g., establish e-mail addresses for each advisory committee that are printed in every issue of Familygram; require advance circulation of advisory committee meeting agendas to local PTAs; distribute annually to every PTA and school office brief descriptions of each advisory committee, including mission/area of purview, names and phone numbers of chair and committee members).

2. County-wide Planning. 
FCPS engages in the development of multi-year plans that are tied to School Board priorities and local school plans. The FCCPTA is particularly pleased with Dr. Domenech's "Two Year Division-Level Planning Cycle" process, which describes several critical points where there will be community input and an opportunity to contribute to the development of the plan. The Office of Planning and Evaluation is developing a survey to be done by Voicepoll to collect community input for the plan. The FCCPTA is encouraged by the outlines of this process, and recommends that parent and community groups be active participants in the development of the school-level objectives and accountability measures. As in the case of other advisory groups, the role of parent and community members should be clarified.

3. Increasing the diversity of participants. 
The School Board and FCPS have initiated various actions to improve the responsiveness of the school division to the diverse needs of students and parents, such as the Extended Family Solutions Conference and diversity training, but additional efforts are needed. However, a specific commitment from the School Board to improving community participation in general, and the diversity of the community participating in particular, would demonstrate a serious commitment to this effort. The FCCPTA recommends that the School Board establish as a priority for the next two-year planning cycle the improvement of parent and community participation, emphasizing the importance of participation from all parents.

4. Budget Input. 
The FCCPTA has previously noted its concern that insufficient time exists between the submission of the Superintendent's Proposed Budget and the School Board public hearings on the budget. The FCCPTA supports Dr. Domenech's plans to open up the budget development process during the fall before submission of the budget to the School Board. The FCCPTA also recommends that FCPS budget office staff seek out opportunities to speak to community groups--particularly those groups identified in this document-- after formal submission of the budget to the School Board.

5. School-Based Advisory Councils. 
Individual schools should form councils consisting of local business and community people, who can be informed of the school's activities and discuss school-community issues with school staff. Such councils should include local PTA representation to ensure that all constituents of the school have a voice on the council. The participation of civic and business leaders in the Principal's Advisory Council is a major means of strengthening a school's ties with the community and community support for the schools. The FCCPTA recommends that all schools be encouraged to establish an advisory council, and that principals actively seek broad community participation even though it may be difficult to arrange because of the pressures of time and conflicting schedules.

6. Electronic Communications. 
The FCPS home page on the World Wide Web is an excellent public relations tool. The FCCPTA commends FCPS staff for the quality of its web-site and the depth and breadth of information about our schools that is available on-line. Nevertheless, the FCCPTA believes the web-site could be made more interactive through the establishment of an on-line "suggestion box" or question-and-answer forum, where correspondents' suggestions, questions and answers could be posted for all to review. This could be structured similar to a "use-net" site where parents and staff communicate cooperatively to answer each other's questions, rather than the responses being the responsibility of a specific FCPS staff person. The FCCPTA recommends that FCPS explore additional ways our electronic resources can be used to solicit input from parents and community at the broader, county-wide level. Other suggestions on the use of our electronic resources to communicate at the school level appear in Section IV, below.

7. Public Participation in Personnel Selection. 
In recent years FCPS has broadened the involvement of parents, teachers, and other community members in the process of selecting upper-level administrators, ranging from the Superintendent to individual school principals, and the FCCPTA applauds these efforts to include stakeholders. However, we are concerned that the role of community panels is unclear, the selection of members is done by a variety of undefined methods, and the impact (or lack thereof) of the panels' recommendations can leave participants feeling frustrated and used, rather than satisfied and valued. Further, applicants need to have a clear understanding of the hiring process before they decide whether to apply. The FCCPTA recommends that the School Board clarify the role of stakeholder participation in administrative personnel selection, and that FCPS staff work with citizen groups like the FCCPTA to develop procedures to implement that role.

B. Accountability
For the public to remain committed to and supportive of our schools, the FCPS must demonstrate its effectiveness in educating students and its accountability for their accomplishments and problems. Our schools along with their communities must identify goals for the schools to accomplish and the criteria for gauging those accomplishments. Although test scores may be one component of assessment, the FCCPTA has in the past specifically opposed the use of SAT scores as a measure of school achievement. We have advocated that FCPS provide more comprehensive longitudinal data for test scores (ITBS, TAP, CoGAT) broken down by socioeconomic status, length of time in FCPS, language and ESL status for each school. Some of this information is now available on the FCPS web-site, but not at the detailed analytical level necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of individual schools in educating specific populations of students, nor is it broken down by the categories listed here.

One measure of accountability inevitably will be the SOA Report Cards. While it is important to compare schools within the county (and state) using a common standard, it is also important to note that some schools have more special needs students than other schools. The special needs school may make more absolute progress in a year than non-special needs schools, but still have an overall poorer showing on a standardized measure. The school plan, which all schools currently prepare and which will become the basis of the new school-based accountability system, should be disseminated to the same group of people who will receive the SOA Report Cards.

The FCCPTA has also advocated the importance of developing a system of accountability that assesses the schools' accomplishments in light of the defined criteria. An effective system of accountability rewards accomplishments and includes measures to improve shortcomings in staff performance. Since compensation constitutes 85% of the school budget, the schools cannot expect to sustain public support when the schools' employees receive automatic step increases, without correlation to the quality of their teaching or efficiency of their work. School system salaries should be competitively structured to attract the very best. In return for paying top drawer salaries, personnel--particularly teachers who are critical to the quality of education--should be held to high performance expectations. Those who meet expectations should be rewarded at one level; those who exceed expectations should be rewarded at a higher level. Those who don't make the grade should not be rewarded. It is thus imperative that the schools develop a system of accountability that reassures the public, while treating school staff fairly.

Recommendations
1. Commitment to Excellence. 
Our schools should demonstrate to the community their continued commitment to educational excellence by:

2. Reporting to the Community. 
We are aware that the Office of Community Relations and other offices within FCPS are working on this issue, particularly as it pertains to the release of the School Report Cards. The FCCPTA feels strongly that the supplementary information provided with the School Report Cards must be specific to each school, and recommends that the individual school plan form the basis of this response.

III. Leading our Organizations to Improve Community Support

Support for public education in Fairfax County can be generated from a variety of sources in a variety of ways. In this section we examine the endeavors of the central office of FCPS, the FCCPTA itself, and related organizations. The FCCPTA, as an advocate for increased support for our schools, is willing to make a major commitment to this effort over the next two years.

A. Connecting with the Media
A first step in promoting a supportive public is to provide accurate information about both our schools' accomplishments and problems and their efforts to solve these problems. In the national media, frequently there is emphasis on the failures of educational institutions in the metropolitan Washington area; as a result, many people may be left with an unfavorable image of schools which they unthinkingly apply to Fairfax County schools. The FCPS Office of Community Relations (OCR), which handles media relations for our school system, has been quite successful in presenting a more positive impression of education in Fairfax County. Among other things, OCR generates news releases, produces newsletters and publications, manages programming for the school's cable television channel, and maintains its web page. Positive stories about the schools are contributed by school liaisons--school-based employees, trained by OCR, who provide information about their schools. The MGT management review of the FCPS commended the OCR for its "nationally acclaimed public information program."

OCR's efforts to keep the public informed have been--and must continue to be--supplemented by a network of school supporters, beginning with the FCCPTA and its members. In addition, OCR is cultivating a network of 200 to 400 key people who can be easily reached to help FCPS convey important school developments to the media and the community at large. Ideally, these communicators can assist the schools by providing support and accurate information pertaining to controversies about the schools.

One of OCR's major "consumers" of information has been the real estate profession. When looking for a house in Fairfax County, prospective purchasers are typically very interested in the schools serving that neighborhood. Realtors, however, are limited by federal, state and local fair housing laws as to what they can say about the reputation of particular schools. These laws are designed to prevent realtors from improper "steering" of buyers on the basis of, among other things, race or national origin. It is the policy of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors to recommend to its members that, when a prospective buyer inquires about the schools where property is located, the realtor should refer the buyer to the schools in question and offer to take the buyer to those schools. In responding to inquiries about the schools, realtors are advised to discuss only "facts" as opposed to their opinions about the schools. The realtor may also inform the buyer about sources of information that are available on the Internet. OCR has provided school profiles, at nominal cost, to realtors.

Recommendations
1. Providing "Rapid Response" Information for Citizens. When a controversial issue emerges in the media (either by media-generated story or letter to the editor), OCR must be prepared to disseminate useful and accurate information to concerned citizens who wish to correct any false or inaccurate information that has appeared. For example, OCR should have "vital fact" documents available and accessible via fax, web page, e-mail, or hard copy so that the communicator will have facts to back up his/her conclusions. In addition, throughout the year, OCR must continue to work to inform the public that there is a web page and other media for securing information about the schools.

2. Fostering Connections with the Real Estate Community. We are pleased that the director of OCR is meeting with real estate professionals to discuss ways to assist them in providing accurate information about the schools. FCPS, and any school that has a home page on the Internet, should give special attention to putting carefully selected factual information on the Internet that would be of major interest to realtors and prospective purchasers of real estate. FCPS should also consider placing such information on the Metropolitan Regional Information System (MRIS), which is only available to realtors and which has a new program on schools. The FCCPTA suggests that FCPS continue to consult with the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors concerning the type of information that would be of interest to the real estate community.

3. Improving access to school documents at libraries. While county libraries have computers that can access the FCPS web site, FCCPTA is concerned that many libraries do not have hard copies of current school publications that are easily accessible for interested citizens. We recommend that OCR continue their work with county libraries to ensure that current publications of FCPS are readily available to the public at all county libraries.

B. Fostering Relations with the Business Community
FCPS has developed numerous ties with the county's business community. There is a Business/Industry Advisory Council, composed of 40 representatives from the business community who meet regularly with the Superintendent to advise him of that community's needs and to provide input into FCPS operations, budget and curriculum. In addition, the Education Foundation and the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce's Education Committee provide connections between business and public education. The Superintendent and other school representatives are frequent speakers at business organization events. Finally, the many advisory councils, committees and groups often have business members.

FCPS has also developed a community outreach program with the business community called the Partners in Education Program. The Office of Business/Industry Relations (OBIR) in Fairfax County Public Schools coordinates this program. As of November 1997, OBIR lists 152 partnerships, which include 124 local businesses; federal, state or local government agencies; or civic clubs; in partnership with 115 schools and centers, with a few schools having multiple partners. Business partners and their activities are selected to participate based on the school's plan. OBIR provides assistance in locating partners and provides evaluation services.

In addition to the educational benefit, the Partners in Education Program provides an important opportunity for the schools to connect to the broader community. A significant number of schools, however, do not have partners. In part this may be due to the location of the school; when a school is located too far away from larger businesses (who in the past have been most likely to be partners), those businesses may be reluctant to establish partnerships. We also sense that there has been less active recruitment of businesses, due to limited resources at OBIR. The recent MGT Management Review recommended that a more equitable system of applying the resources of business to the schools be developed.

Recommendations
1. Recruiting New Businesses for the Partners in Education. The FCCPTA believes there should be more recruitment of businesses for business partnerships, especially at special needs schools. We recommend that it be determined whether additional resources should be given to OBIR so that it can enhance its recruitment efforts or whether its responsibilities should be refocused so that recruitment becomes its primary mission.

2. Outreach to Small Business. An identification of contact points and forums for reaching various small business associations in the county would be a worthwhile endeavor for the FCCPTA. We believe that the local schools and/or PTAs should ascertain the level of contact between schools and business within their boundaries and then convey this information to the county council or central office of the schools. Furthermore, we should identify possible connections with "regional" business groups (such as the Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce) to determine whether they might initiate their own Education Committees.

C. School-Community Interactions
There are many advisory groups--at the central office, as well as at the area and school level--that invite parents, staff and members of the public to contribute their ideas and reactions to the schools. In particular, we note the Principal Advisory Councils in Area I, where the principal selects members of the non-school public to share information with the school. As management of the school system becomes (we hope) increasingly decentralized, these local advisory groups should prove to be particularly valuable in engaging citizens in public education.

We also note that there are opportunities for school-community interaction that can foster greater understanding of the challenges and accomplishments of our public schools. For example, in Fairfax County, there are 22 community coalitions--organizations (funded by federal grants) that promote substance abuse prevention and a violence-free community for our youth. These programs are tailored to address potential or existing problems within a school pyramid. Each coalition draws its membership from students, parents, the local police, civic, business, faith and ethnically-diverse communities. Coalitions offer an ongoing community-wide awareness and involvement campaign that can increase appreciation and support for our schools.

There may be many other opportunities for school-community interaction as well. Several county-wide organizations (including the League of Women Voters and the Federation of Citizens Associations) and several organizations in magisterial districts (in Mount Vernon and McLean) have education committees that provide critical support for the schools in their communities. We need to ascertain whether other umbrella civic associations could be encouraged to establish education committees that would connect with the community's schools. There are specific task forces to revitalize parts of the county (e.g., Route 1 corridor) that should include school-based representatives who can provide ideas and share mutual concerns. Similarly, on a smaller scale, schools and community groups can help students who are required to engage in community service to identify and work on local needs.

Recommendations
1. The FCCPTA supports the work of the community coalitions. It believes that we should continue to study this area to determine if other mutually beneficial community-school collaborations can be replicated from the coalition model.

2. The FCCPTA encourages other umbrella organizations of civic and homeowner associations within the county to form education committees.

D. The FCCPTA: Connecting with our Membership
The PTA’s mission includes the following objectives: 1) "To bring into closer relation the home and the school, that parents and teachers may cooperate intelligently in the education of children and youth;" and 2) "to develop between educators and the general public such united efforts as will secure for all children and youth the highest advantages in physical, mental, social, and spiritual education." To accomplish these objectives the FCCPTA works at many levels: with the School Board, with school staff, both in administrative offices and in schools, with our constituent PTA boards, and with other community organizations.

We believe that the FCCPTA could also benefit from a rededication to the goal of improving community support for our schools, and address in this section the ways we can best go about this. We focus on what we can do to better support and represent our member PTA boards. We also identify how we can better communicate our views and positions to those outside the FCCPTA, including the School Board and community and civic organizations.

The FCCPTA is composed of the PTA boards from almost all Fairfax County Public Schools. Many on the FCCPTA Executive Board are also PTA presidents or delegates to the FCCPTA from their local PTAs. Even with this overlapping membership between the county-wide level and the local level, the FCCPTA has found it difficult to keep its members involved in the issues before the School Board, the Board of Supervisors, and the State legislature, and in turn to remain fully informed about the concerns of our members. Part of this is inherent in the size of our school district: with 207 schools, centers, and alternative schools there are just a lot of people with whom to communicate. In the past, the FCCPTA has relied primarily on its monthly newsletter to disseminate information, but during critical times of the year, such as the budget season or when the Virginia legislature is in session, this method alone is ineffective. We have also used a FAX system to communicate, but this has proven to have limitations as well.

This year the FCCPTA has experimented with three new methods of communication: a hotline for communicating short meeting and issue advisories, an e-mail communication system with local PTA boards, and a web-site. The first of these saves many "house-keeping" type phone calls, and the latter two offer excellent and immediate two-way communication systems. Parents who are active in the FCCPTA and our local PTAs have a great depth and breadth of knowledge about school, education, and family issues at many levels. We need to find a better way to tap that knowledge and share it with each other.

As a volunteer organization we must be cautious not to place too heavy a load on any one volunteer and to use the volunteers we have wisely. One of our biggest challenges is maintaining regular communications with our local PTAs; there are just too many of them for one person to handle. In recognition of this, the pyramid coordinator position was established. This position needs to become a key link in the structure of the FCCPTA, and not just a link in the telephone chain.

Another group of volunteers the FCCPTA could use more effectively are our liaisons to School Board Committees and Curriculum Advisory Committees. These people also often serve in more than one capacity with the FCCPTA, and because of meeting schedules it is difficult to attend all the FCCPTA Executive Board meetings to report on the activities of the School Board Committees.

Commitments
1. A County-wide E-mail System. The FCCPTA will expand its e-mail system and solicit e-mail addresses from at least one PTA board member at each school. The FCCPTA will determine in advance how to safeguard these addresses from unauthorized use.

2. Expanded Use of the World Wide Web. The FCCPTA web site has just been posted and is still under development. All information about the officers, structure, and functioning of the County Council, along with e-mail addresses for officers, will be included on the web site. In addition, the many position papers, newsletters, speeches made before the School Board, Board of Supervisors, and testimony at the state level will be posted on the web site for reference by our members. We also will consider the establishment of a bulletin board or use-net type site to be used to solicit input on particular issues under consideration by the FCCPTA.

3. Repackage our Issues and Policy Papers. The FCCPTA has produced many research and analytical documents over the past five years. Some have been buried in files; others are still floating around. All are too long for our membership to use effectively. The major focus for the FCCPTA in the upcoming year will be to abstract the most important information and positions from these documents and produce a short series of position papers. We expect that these will be posted on the web and distributed to all PTA members.

4. The Pyramid Coordinator. We will employ the pyramid coordinator more effectively as a resource person for the entire pyramid.

5. Reporting on School Board Advisory Committee Meetings. The FCCPTA appointees to School Board advisory committees will submit brief reports on the issues before their advisory committees. These reports will then be posted on the FCCPTA web site.

6. Leadership Training for the FCCPTA. The FCCPTA is committed to providing quality training opportunities to all PTA members by providing leadership training and continued support to local units. Local PTAs should take advantage of this training and encourage members of their PTA, especially the Board, to attend these training sessions.

7. Media Training for new PTA Representatives. Each spring as the FCCPTA and local PTAs establish their boards for the coming year, the FCCPTA vice-president responsible for media relations should contact the PTA boards to remind them of the need for a media or community relations representative.

IV. Strengthening Ties with the Community at the School Level
In our efforts to secure the support of our school "community," we recognize that there are many diverse and overlapping communities in Fairfax County. Obviously, there are various geographic communities throughout our large school district (currently ranked the 12th largest in the nation). There are also racial, ethnic, and language communities which cross-cut the geographic and residential communities. While residents may feel a sense of community with their local school and pyramid, they may feel less connection to the county system as a whole. Given Fairfax County's physical size and location within the metropolitan Washington area, some local schools may not have much to connect with if they are located in one area while people's jobs, associations, and social lives lie in other communities.

Within any given location, there are many different communities of people with connected interests: parents, homeowners, community, civic, fellowship and religious groups, business and professional entities, athletic and youth organizations, ethnic groups, and retired people. Some of these "communities" have forged strong relationships with the school system. FCCPTA believes that we must identify opportunities to build and strengthen the ties between our schools and the various communities in the county. This endeavor should be part of a long-term plan to engender community support.

Surveys indicate that most people who don't have children in school receive almost as much information about the schools from their adult friends and neighbors as from local newspapers. Our strategies for sustaining community support must include both media and person-to-person approaches. As will be discussed below, there are many ways to reach members of the community and to increase their commitment to the public schools.

Admittedly, many members of the public are limited in the amount of time and attention they can devote to the public schools. While there are undoubtedly a number of citizens who could contribute more of their time as volunteers or attendees at "Town Meeting" presentations about the public schools, most county residents find themselves very busy, with limited time even to receive information about public education. In suggesting strategies to increase support for the public schools we must accommodate these realities. In the following sections, we address a number of issues and make recommendations that are critical to maintaining public support for Fairfax County Public Schools.

A. Improving Connections with Parents
There are as many different school environments in Fairfax County as there are schools. The ever increasing diversity of students and their families in FCPS should be perceived as a positive component to our communities which enhances the education of our children in an era of globalization. Our understanding of diversity should include race, ethnicity, religion and gender. In many cultures the role of the parent as an agent in the child’s education is not viewed in the same activist light that we in the United States, with our history of local school boards and parent involvement, construe it. Our view of the parent as a partner in the child’s education is a peculiarly American conception of the relationship between school and home. Both school staff and PTA must be open to different conceptions of the home-school relationship as they embark on their efforts to improving connections with all the parents in our Fairfax communities.

A common thread that should exist in each Fairfax County school is a commitment to make "customer orientation" an important priority. Schools must be responsive to the parents' concerns. Responsiveness requires that schools and parents be able to communicate effectively; that school staffs display courtesy and respect toward parents; and that school personnel maintain an attitude of collaboration with parents as they work to resolve parental concerns. School staff must be committed to fostering communication with all parents, and not be content to communicate well only with those with whom it is easiest to communicate.

Our PTAs also have an important role to play in fostering communication between parents, school, and PTA. PTA boards set the tone for interaction between parents and school by conducting all business in an open, professional fashion that demonstrates their commitment to children's needs first. Our PTAs should be committed to the involvement of all parents in all PTA activities. The recommendations that follow address ways that both school staff and PTAs, working individually and in concert, can improve relationships with parents.

Recommendations
1. Foster a Parent-Friendly Culture. At a minimum, school administrators, particularly principals, should require a parent-friendly culture, particularly in the front office of each school. The school plan should define the specific measures each school will take to ensure that parents from all the diverse communities in Fairfax County are welcomed in the classroom and in the school building. Local school-level follow-up from the School Board initiated diversity training workshops should be undertaken as part of this process.

2. Make our Local PTAs more Reflective of our Communities. Just as our schools must welcome participation from all parents, so must our PTAs. Our PTAs can demonstrate their commitment to broad participation by translating PTA newsletters into the most common languages spoken by the school population and making interpreters available for PTA Board and general membership meetings. Our local PTAs should be encouraged to participate in school-based activities that are part of the follow-up on the diversity training.

3. Promote Membership in the PTA. People join organizations and increase their volunteer efforts when they see a benefit from doing so. Our local PTAs should design activities that will benefit all groups of parents. PTAs can "market" their activities to encourage greater participation by defining the benefits to school and home from participation. School-home dialogue should be promoted as a mechanism for empowering parents in their children’s education.

4. Use E-mail and FAX to Communicate. Many families now have e-mail addresses and/or dedicated home FAX lines. Schools and PTAs should collect e-mail addresses and FAX numbers, as they now collect telephone and cell phone numbers. Both the PTAs and the schools should consider using e-mail as a regular communication method with parents. Some schools may be able to use e-mail and FAXes in lieu of mailings for many parents, which would save both money and time. In turn, the schools should distribute their e-mail addresses to parents.

5. Investigate the School-Parent Contract. The school system in conjunction with parents should investigate establishing a school-parent contract to be signed jointly by the school and parents that delineates the roles and responsibilities of each for the success of their children.

B. Connecting with the Media.
The Office of Community Relations (OCR) has developed a network of news liaisons at each school to provide positive stories about that school. The principal of each school designates a school employee as news liaison; at the beginning of the school year, OCR trains them to collect information of interest to the media. During the school year, each school's liaison conveys positive newsworthy information either directly to local media or to OCR, which itself disseminates the stories to the media.

The employees who serve as liaisons are, in general, doing a fine job, although they of course have other school responsibilities. Some live outside the school's boundaries and may not be intimately familiar with the concerns of non-parents who live in the area served by the school. They may also be unaware of the other members of the community who are willing to publicly support the schools, through, for example, letters to the editor and to local representatives. Although local PTA members are the logical base of this support, many may feel they lack sufficient information to present and support their positions to the media.

Recommendations
1. News liaison/PTA Collaboration. OCR should work with local schools to encourage the school-based news liaison to collaborate with the PTA. The FCCPTA should also encourage PTAs to designate one member as media or community relations representative. This PTA member could work with the school liaison to identify relevant news, particularly news that would be of interest to the people in the immediate vicinity of the school.

2. Encouraging Local Voices. Local PTAs should encourage their members to voice support for the schools to the media. Local community representatives and news liaisons can assist PTA members in voicing their concerns to the media. The local PTA president receives many resources from the FCCPTA Executive Board that can help PTA members prepare letters to the editor and news articles. PTA presidents should make sure that each PTA member knows i) their FCCPTA pyramid coordinator (who can serve as a pyramid resource) and ii) how to contact the various resource people within the FCCPTA.

C. Connecting with Community Associations
In Fairfax County there are several thousand homeowner, condominium, and cooperative associations, which are mandatory membership organizations, and civic associations, which are voluntary organizations. They range from stable, well-financed, and well-organized organizations to associations in name only, some of which only come back to life when a neighborhood issue arises. Some of the smaller groups have only a few active members who struggle to keep the association alive.

What is needed is a point of contact between each school and the community associations located within the school's area. Given the number and variety of associations, identifying associations and their leaders may be a daunting task. Nonetheless, developing a network between the PTA and community associations should prove to be a very effective way of reaching key leaders in the community.

Recommendations
1. Identify Contacts. The elementary school PTAs should identify the civic and homeowners associations for their boundary area and a contact person for each association. They should share this information with the PTAs at the middle and high schools in their pyramid, thereby reducing duplication. The school principal, at least at the elementary school level, should know which associations are in the school's attendance area and the names of the current presidents.

2. Encourage Interaction. The principal should invite the local association presidents or their representatives to attend school functions and to serve on the school-based advisory group. The PTA president should encourage the association president (or a designee) to join the PTA. In turn, the local PTA should ask each community association to allow a PTA board member to attend the meetings of the board of directors of the community association. Community associations should be on the PTA newsletter mailing list. The PTA president may also offer to attend an association's general membership meeting. PTA newsletters may include mention of community association activities such as meetings and fund-raisers.

3. Provide Concrete Information. The beginning-of-the-year information packages mailed to each student's family should also be sent to the community and homeowners’ associations, along with current basic information about the school such as the annual School Profile. In addition, either the school's news liaison or the PTA's community relations representative could arrange to have basic information and news about the school appear in association newsletters. If the public is invited to a school event, the invitation should be publicized in association newsletters.

D. Reaching Out to the Local Community.
Schools need to reach out to the local community to inform it of the school's accomplishments and needs and to secure the ideas and contributions of the public.

Recommendations
1. Open House. Each school should sponsor open houses in which members of the community are invited to tours and presentations at the school. Open houses for the community might coincide with a federal holiday, such as Veterans Day, to maximize the opportunity for community participation. Target groups can be invited to come to school, take a tour and then meet with teachers, students and PTA representatives for dialogue.

2. Community "Centers." Neighborhood use of school facilities for athletic, cultural, and community association events fosters a sense of affinity with and ownership of the school and should be encouraged even more than at present.

3. Maximizing Use of School Signs. Every school should have a marquee sign that enables it to inform the community in a brief blurb about activities at and accomplishments of the school. Principals and PTAs should make every effort to assure that the messages on the signs are kept current. PTAs have contributed significantly to this effort, as most school signs have been purchased by PTAs.

4. Community Partnerships and Volunteers. Mount Vernon High School and its PTA have developed "Community Resource Committees," which pair non-school persons with expertise in specific areas, such as technology or history, with teachers within the school. This network familiarizes members of the community with the school and helps support school staff in their work while improving their contact with members of the community.

5. Local Business Survey. FCCPTA believes that the schools need to reach out to the small business communities in Fairfax County. It might be useful for the principal of each school (or his/her designee) and/or local PTAs to canvass businesses within its school's boundaries and to develop an approach for communicating with local business. While local PTAs often do approach local business when fundraising, it is equally important for schools to invite local businesspeople to contribute their ideas and concerns, as well as their dollars.

6. Maintaining Contact with Alumni and their Parents. As the number of parents of school-aged children declines and the number of empty-nesters grows, public education must increasingly rely on the parents of alumni for support. It, therefore, may be useful for schools to maintain contact with alumni and their parents, as way of keeping them appraised of the innovations and developments at their former schools.

E. Connecting with Older Citizens
Older and retired persons hold a significant number of leadership positions in homeowners' and civic associations and perhaps in other organizations as well. They are apt to think of schools and public education in terms of the schools that they attended and the education that they received years ago. They may need more information about the importance of programs that did not exist when they were in school.

Recommendations
1. Open School Doors. Principals and PTAs should make special efforts to invite older members of the community to open houses, special school functions, advisory councils and other activities so that these citizens can best appreciate, first hand, the schools that they are being asked to support.

2. Grandparents Day. Many schools have a grandparents day when children are encouraged to invite their grandparents to visit school. Those children whose grandparents are deceased or who live too far away to attend could invite a local senior citizen to stand in as their "grandparent for the day." 

V. Continuing our Efforts to Maintain Community Support.
In recent years public engagement and community support have been major themes in education. Many articles have been written on the subject. The Kettering Foundation has devoted much effort to studying community-building and public support for the schools.

The Annenberg Institute is in the midst of an extended "mapping" project, designed to identify "best practices" of various engagement initiatives. It is a tribute to FCPS that representatives at several other Virginia school districts, when asked what innovations in public engagement they had undertaken, responded that they usually looked to Fairfax County for ideas.

As part of an ongoing effort, the Budget Committee's task force on community support will continue to study ways to increase civic commitment to the schools. A document briefly describing outreach efforts in other school districts would be useful both to OCR and to the FCCPTA's efforts. Furthermore, the continuation of our efforts to understand how to engender community support is itself a key element in sustaining that support for the public schools of Fairfax County.

If the School Board, FCPS, the FCCPTA, and our local PTAs truly make a commitment to involving a wide spectrum of community members and parents by following through on the recommendations contained in this report, we believe our schools and children would greatly benefit. Improved involvement in our schools would demonstrate to our teachers and staff that our community does value their work. It would demonstrate to our communities that our schools are doing an excellent job of educating our children, and that continued excellence is crucial to the well-being of both our children and our community. Finally, a re-invigorated partnership between school and community would help vouchsafe a bright future for Fairfax County.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Carroll, Susan Rovezzi and Carroll, David, How Smart Schools Get and Keep Commuity Support, Bloomington, National Educational Service, 1994.

2. Kindred, Leslie W., et al., eds, The School and Community Relations (3d edition), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1984.

3. Lober, Irene, Promoting Your School, Lancaster, PA, Technomic Publishing, 1993.

4. Mathews, David, Is There a Public for Public Schools? Dayton, Kettering Foundation, 1996.

5. MGT of America, Inc., A Management Review of Fairfax County Public Schools 1997.

6. Various articlers, Phi Beta Kappan, June 1997.

7. Wadsworth, Deborah, "Building a Strategy for Successful Public Engagement," Phi Beta Kappan, June 1997, p. 749-52.

8. Warner, Carolyn, Promoting Your School: Going Beyond PR.

Last Updated 03/19/2009 09:17:45