The Annual Bilingual Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) Conference was conducted at Pasco High School by district leaders to ensure that families whose children receive bilingual services are aware of programs offered and are active partners in their children’s education. Pasco School District completed its 10th year of membership in NNPS and is entering its second decade of partnership program development.
Pasco, Washington
Bilingual PAC Conference—
Connecting School, Family, and Community
The Annual Bilingual Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) Conference was conducted in January at Pasco High School by district leaders for all stakeholders in children’s education. Attendees included PAC team members, administrators, teachers, students, and many volunteers who helped plan and conduct the conference. One goal is to ensure that families whose children receive bilingual services are aware of these programs and are active partners in their children’s education. The date was chosen to match the availability of many bilingual parents who are seasonal farmworkers. The date, a Saturday of a 3-day weekend, was favored by teachers who were more willing to participate knowing that they would be off from school on Monday.
Parents and children had breakfast, collected information from community groups, and enjoyed the Pasco High School student mariachi band. Parents selected two sessions in the morning, ate lunch, heard from a keynote speaker, and selected one more session in the afternoon. They chose from a range of topics on students’ academic programs in school and the social and emotional aspects of parenting—all conducted in Spanish. Students from grades PreK through high school went to classes led by teachers and volunteers. Elementary students had classes in STEM subjects and art. Middle and high school students’ sessions focused on leadership development and planning for college.
Bilingual PAC Conference is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2015.
Sustaining and Improving Communications
in the Second Decade
Communication is key to building strong programs of school, family and community partnerships at the district level and in all schools. Pasco School District completed its 10th year of membership in NNPS and is entering its second decade of partnership program development. Every year, the Leaders for Partnerships have become more expert about how to ensure sustainable partnership programs, despite inevitable changes in district and school leaders.
To help all schools ATP Chairs and Co-chairs lead effective teams, the district leaders have developed tools and guidelines or adapted NNPS materials for well-planned meetings, goal-linked plans, shared best practices, and annual evaluations of progress.
Parents, teachers, administrators, district leaders, PEAK! Partners (Community Partners in Educating All Kids!), and others benefit from using Pasco’s tools so that programs of family and community engagement run smoothly and improve each year. If the district Leaders for Partnership are accused of “over-communicating” with their schools’ ATPs, they say, “Guilty as charged and proud of it!”
Sustaining and Improving Communication in the Second Decade is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2015.
