Kennewick, Washington

Row 2 (l to r): Annabell Gonzalez (NNPS key contact), Sarah Del Toro (NNPS key contact), Kelly Bolson (NNPS key contact)

Best Practices Showcase

The End-of-Year Celebration is an important way for all members of Kennewick’s ATPs to get together, celebrate excellent work, and be inspired by good ideas for their next year’s plans for partnerships. To improve the way this celebration is conducted, district Leaders for Partnerships streamlined how presentations are made. First, district leaders created a master Power Point to highlight all schools’ best practices. Each school team was asked to create one slide to add to the presentation. Second, district leaders developed a simple booklet that each attendee could use to follow and take notes on each school’s presentation about their work on partnerships.

At the Winter Cluster Meeting of ATP Chairs, district leaders provided guidelines and a sample of the content and format of a slide, and a sample of the one-page write up that each school would submit. District leaders helped schools select the most appropriate practice to highlight. The schools’ ATPs were happy to change from the prior “poster” format to the slide show (for which they had a link). School teams also appreciated the booklet to see the one page write-ups and take notes for their next plans. District leaders were happy to model how to evaluate and continually improve a leadership practice, just as they ask the school teams to do.

Community Resource Roundtable

The Community Resource Roundtable—also known as Resource Fair Meets Speed Dating—was designed by the innovative Leaders for Partnerships in the Kennewick School District. Some say this was a “match made in heaven.” About 35 community and business partners participated. District leaders wanted to link 17 school-based Action Teams for Partnerships (ATPs) with useful resources in the community. Rather than a “wander-around-fair,” the leaders set up the event a la “speed dating.” Each school’s team had a short, focused conversation with each agency in attendance. This enabled school teams to meet and talk with potential community partners they would not have met otherwise.

The Community Resource Roundtable was part of a whole-day retreat that the district leaders conduct for ATP Chairs each year. The retreat is designed to build the leadership of ATP Chairs and to help them gather information and ideas from other teams about best practices that may be used or adapted in their school’s next One-Year Action Plan for Partnerships. The “dating” portion of the event lasted 90 minutes, with about 30 minutes for ATP Chairs to follow up with agencies that were the best “match” for a school or where the ATP Chair wanted more information. At the end of the 2-hour session, district leaders debriefed the activity.

Community Resource Roundtable is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2016.