Pasco, Washington

Row 2 (l to r): Leslie Guzman (Key Contact to NNPS & Parent Partnership Coordinator), Amy Phillips, Aaron Richardson, Sherry Lancon, Steve Christensen, Scott Lehrman, Michelle Whitney (Superintendent), Esmeralda M Valencia (Key Contact to NNPS & Parent Engagement Coordinator)

Keep It Personal for Student Success

In Pasco School District, the Leaders for Partnerships set a goal to intentionally reach out to parents who participated in classes and projects at the Parent Education Center (PEC). They wanted these parents to know about the Action Team for Partnerships (ATP) at their child’s school and how they could become involved with the ATP. In the same building, the PEC also posted the monthly calendars from all schools’ ATPs in English and Spanish to help parents check meeting schedules (dates, times, and locations) and engagement activities at their own child’s school. The district leaders encourage ATPs to keep their calendars up to date and to add or change information as needed.

District Leaders for Partnerships kept their eyes open for opportunities to talk, one-on-one, with parents, other family members, and community partners to encourage them to become active partners with the ATPs at children’s schools. They believe that the personal-touch will be the best way to help parents understand that they have a voice in improving school programs and increasing their children’s success in school.

Keep It Personal for Student Success is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2016.

We Are a STEM Family!

Pasco School District is working to advance students’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is important because the local economy is based on STEM-related occupations in energy, conservation, agriculture, technological research, engineering design, and national defense. Over the past two years, the district opened five STEM elementary schools and identified a STEM director to advance this agenda in all 21 schools in the district. To increase communications with families about STEM , the leaders conducted a session for ATP Chairpersons called We are a STEM Family. With this information, the ATP at each school could inform students’ parents about the district’s STEM mission and their school-based programs. The STEM director attended some school meetings as a guest speaker on the subject.

A Family Engineering Fun Night was conducted at the district office as a model that schools could use at each site. Pasco’s partners (e.g., Hanford, a former nuclear production complex; Mid-Columbia STEM Education Collaboratory; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) participated with workshops and captivating demonstrations. Students and parents built towers, created catapults or launchers, and excavated chocolate chips from cookies. District funds provided a book on Family Engineering for every school in English and Spanish. A small grant for STEM program development was used to provide a box of resource materials that schools could borrow for school-based Family Engineering Nights. Pasco Leaders for Partnerships plan to conduct STEM ice breakers at every Cluster Meeting to continue to give ATP chairpersons ideas to use at their own team meetings and with parents and students at their schools to boost students’ interests in STEM subjects.

We Are a STEM Family! is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2016.