George West ISD Parent Involvement Plan

The goal of George West Independent School District’s parental involvement efforts is to promote a highly effective working partnership among the parents of our children, the district staff, and the staffs at each of our campuses.  To this end, George West ISD has adopted the following parent involvement plan to ensure that we provide our parents substantial and meaningful opportunities to participate as equal partners in the education of their children.  Additionally, as per Section 1118 of Public Law 107-110 No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the district will support its campuses in their efforts to build the capacities of the school staffs, as well as the capacities of parents and community members, to work as equal partners in educating each child.

The current plan was drafted by the George West ISD District Advisory Council (DAC), edited, as appropriate, submitted to all parents for further review and comment, and finalized with further consideration of additional input from parents.  Each year, the plan content and opportunities for parents’ involvement in the life of the school will be evaluated and revised, as appropriate, to support our district-wide academic goals and to include measures to improve continuously the partnership between school and family.    

In full, the plan consists of six sections.  Section I outlines the development of the parent involvement plan, its evaluation, and revision, as needed.  Section II outlines procedures for selecting the parent involvement advisory, and Section III outlines the required actions outlined in Public Law 107-110 to be conducted by the DAC in collaboration with the parent involvement advisory.

Section IV offers specific parent involvement activities to be provided during the current school year.  These are derived from analysis of the preceding year’s evaluation, from input gathered from the parent community at large, and from campus input.  This section will be updated annually to reflect the most pressing needs identified through evaluation and through the prioritized yearly academic goals of the district.

Formal evaluation of the parent involvement plan and program will be included in Section V once completed.  In addition to the district’s formal evaluation, aggregated data collected from each of the district-wide actions and campus initiatives will be utilized, as appropriate, to improve efforts at the district level.  As per the requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act, the district’s evaluation will determine the value of the content of the involvement plan and determine the effectiveness of the parent involvement plan to…

·            Improve the academic quality of the Title I, Part A schools; and to

·            Identify barriers to greater parent participation, particularly to parents who are economically disadvantaged, are disabled, have limited English proficiency, have limited literacy, and are of any ethnic minority background.

The DAC and the parent involvement advisory will use these findings in designing strategies for more effective parental involvement and for revising the district plan, as necessary, to support increased involvement.

Section VI outlines the parent involvement requirements of each of the district’s Title I, Part A campuses.  These are included within the district plan to guarantee that the district appropriately provides technical assistance and support to each campus, ensuring quality parental involvement and compliance with    Title I, Part A requirements outlined in Public Law 107-110.

 Section I:  Written Plan Development

GWISD will utilize the following procedures for development and revision of the Parent Involvement Plan:

1. Initial Draft:  The DAC will draft the plan.
2. Parent Orientation:  The DAC has invited / will invite all parents to an orientation meeting to review the requirements of Section 1118 and share its drafted parent involvement plan.
3. Purpose of the Committee:  Led by representatives of the DAC or its designee, the ad-hoc committee assigned by campus principals will review the drafted plan and revise as it deems most appropriate, ensuring that the district’s plan includes measures to build the capacities of school personnel to work with parents and measures to build the capacities of parents to work as equal partners with school staff.
4. Draft Plan:  The drafted plan will be disseminated to parents for additional input.
5. Final Plan:  The DAC and the ad-hoc committee will finalize the parental involvement plan, revising as appropriate, to include suggestions offered from the general dissemination.  As per Section 1118, the plan will become a part of the district’s plan.
6. Dissemination of the Parent Involvement Plan:  Upon completion of all revisions, the DAC will disseminate the completed plan to all parents.
7. Evaluation of the Parent Involvement Plan & Program:  At the close of the first year of implementation, the DAC, with assistance from members of the ad-hoc committee, will devise and conduct an annual evaluation of the parental involvement plan – including measures defined within the tables for each campus.
8. Revision of the Written Plan: Based upon a review of evaluation results, the DAC and members of the ad-hoc parent committee/Parent Advisory will revise the plan to ensure continued, meaningful opportunities for parents’ participation in the life of the school. 
9. Parent Involvement Advisory:  During the initial implementation year of this current plan (2005-2006), the DAC with the assistance of the ad-hoc parent committee will revise the procedures defined in the next section for creating a permanent parent advisory, which will, with DAC membership, lead evaluation and revision of the parental involvement plan thereafter.  Revised procedures for establishing this committee will become part of the parent involvement plan.

 Section II:  Parent Involvement Advisory

The following outlines the procedures created by the DAC for creating and maintaining the Parent Involvement Advisory.  The district will seek participation of parents’ representative of all student populations, in particular, parents of targeted student groups (e.g., migrant, LEP/ESL, Special Education, At-Risk, etc.):

1. Extend invitations, both written and verbal, to parents, including those of all special populations
2. Host a parent orientation session in which the following are reviewed:  Title I, Part A Requirements, Purpose of the Parent Advisory, Responsibilities of the Advisory
3. Solicit membership through election or volunteer basis
4. Set the annual timeline for meetings
5. Conduct an annual evaluation of the work of the advisory

 Section III:  Required Activities as outlined in Public Law 107-110

The parent advisory, with the DAC, will assist the district to conduct the following required activities as outlined in the tables in this section. 

 
Section IV:  Annual Parent Involvement Activities

The activities in the table below delineate specific annual activities conducted/supported by the district and designed with the input of parents (Parent Advisory).  Please note:  These activities, not required by law, may change from year to year, depending on specific evaluation data and the specific annual goals established by the DAC (e.g., specialized training to increase the capacity of the advisory to operate effectively). 

 
Section V:  Evaluation of the District Parent Involvement Plan

In addition to aggregated data from individual district-wide activities and outline in preceding tables and data from campus parent involvement activities supported by the district, the DAC and the parent advisory will develop additional measures to gather input from parents such as interviews and surveys such as the following.

 

 Section VI:  Plan Requirements for Title I Part A Campuses

To assist the Title I Part A campuses in providing substantial and meaningful opportunities for parent involvement and in complying with federal requirements, the district will provide technical assistance and support for each of the campus’ development of a parent involvement plan that:

1.            Provides for an annual meeting to inform parents of the campus’ participation in Title I, Part A, the requirements of Title I, and parents’ rights to be involved, and provides parents with the following:

w         Information about the school’s program and informs them of processes for timely updates about program changes (e.g., newsletters, letters, site-based decision making committee minutes, etc.).

w         Description and explanation of the curriculum in use, the forms of academic assessments, and the proficiency levels students are expected to meet.

w         Explains opportunities for parents to formulate suggestions and to participate, as appropriate, in decisions relating to the education of their children, and measures to ensure response to such suggestions.

2.            Offers a flexible number of meetings and, as appropriate, provides for transportation, child care, or home visits.

3.            Develops procedures to involve parents in an organized, ongoing, and timely way in planning, reviewing, and improving the academic program, including planning, reviewing, and improving the school’s parent involvement plan and the schoolwide program plan.

4.            Implements measures enabling parents to offer comments on the school’s plan.

5.            Outlines the process for developing/revising with parents the school-parent compact to outline how parents, the entire school staff, and students will share the responsibility for improved student academic achievement and the means by which the school and the parents will build a partnership to help children achieve State standards.  The compact shall….

w         Describe the school’s responsibility to provide high quality curriculum and instruction in a supportive and effective learning environment and ways in which each parent will be responsible for supporting their children’s learning (e.g., monitoring attendance, homework completion, and television watching; volunteering in the classroom; participating, as appropriate, in decisions relating to education and positive use of extra-curricular time.

w         Address the importance of ongoing communication between teachers and parents at a minimum through (1) annual parent-teacher conferences, during which the compact shall be discussed in relation to each child’s achievement; (2) frequent reports to parents on children’s progress; (3) opportunities, through reasonable access to staff, to volunteer in their child’s class and observation of classroom activities.

6.            Provides measures to assist parents in understanding…

w         State’s academic achievement and content standards.

w         State and local academic assessments.

w         The Title I, Part A requirements.

w         Ways to monitor a child’s progress.

w         Ways to work with educators to improve achievement.

7.            Provides materials and training to help parents work with their children to improve achievement, such as literacy training, using technology to foster parent involvement and so forth.

8.            Provides measures, designed with the assistance of parents to educate teachers, pupil services personnel, principals, and other staff, in the value and utility of parent contributions, in ways to reach out to and to communicate with and to work with parents as equal partners; in ways to implement and coordinate parent programs; and ways to build ties between parents and the school.