Parent Group Principles

MISSION: To build community and support the staff and one another, for the good of our children

MONTHLY MEETINGS:

• Meet monthly to get to know each other, collaborate together to make our scholars' educational experience better and get informed about current events at the school.
  • 1- Diversity training/Ice Breaker: We are a diverse school and so we want to take the first few min of each meeting to work toward breaking down cultural barriers and learning more about each other.
  • 2- Monthly Collaborative Task: Each month we will have a task to collaborate on, some may be planning events, working on a project around the school, or whatever else may come up.
  • 3- Brief overview of updates/announcements
  • 4- Each meeting should end with requests for collaborative project for the next months meeting, and sign ups for snack -
    We want anyone who is interested to make suggestions about what you would like to see the parent group work on. We want this group to be a place where we can join together and share skills and resources among each other in order to give our scholars and their school the support they need to succeed and enjoy themselves while doing so. The officers will look over all suggestions and decide how best to move forward for the next meeting.
• Immediately following each meeting have a time for school wide concerns to be addressed by the principal. (This is scheduled immediately after our meeting because: 1- it's convenient for parents to bring up concerns to the principal when they are already at school for the parent group, but 2- we don’t want to take time away from the actual parent meeting.)

RESOURCE FAIR-

• In order to offer as many resources as possible to more of the parent body, there will be 2 resource fairs held each school year (one in the fall and one in the spring). Community organizations can host tables to share information on programming and resources available to our families.
• Those organizations who are requesting to present to parents about what they have to offer will be asked to wait until the resource fair for that semester or coordinate with the school staff about hosting a special meeting for presenting to parents (instead of at the monthly parent meetings where the focus is on using that time for collaborative tasks and getting informed on school matters.)

DUTIES OF OFFICERS:

• All:

• Help lead parent meetings—officers will lead process to set the day and time for monthly meetings that best fit their schedule (and the school’s) since they will be leading them.
• Facilitate discussions for planning events, and school collaboration projects
• Help gather parent feedback and concerns and get them to appropriate leaders.
• Commit to 2 year term

• President:

• Helps make sure the group sticks to its purpose
• Main facilitator of meetings
• Makes sure everyone’s voice is being heard
• Leads the group in helping with decision making

• Communicates on behalf of the group with the school administration, Management Co., and Board.

• Coordinates planning meetings with other officers

• Vice-President:

• Advisor to President
• In the event that the President has to step down from the position, the VP would assume the President’s responsibilities until a special election is held to fill the office of a new President.
• Makes sure everyone has signed in for meeting
• Coordinates sign ups for snacks—make sure the sign up sheet is set out, and if no on has signed up for the next month they will ask around for volunteers to make sure snacks are covered at the next month’s meeting.

• Secretary(English Speaker):

• Records the minutes for meetings
• Provides sign-in sheets for meetings
• In charge of posting minutes in office within 1 week of meeting.

• Secretary(Spanish speaker):

• Records the minutes for meetings in Spanish (or translate the English version of recorded minutes)
• In charge of posting minutes in Spanish in the office, within 1 week of meeting.

Decision Making:

- All decisions the President makes will be cleared with at least 2 other officers before moving forward in an action.

Reporting Parent Body Feedback:

• Those seeking parent body feedback may be the principal, teachers, management company, board of directors, community organizations, ect.
• President of Parent Group will be responsible for including in any report of parent feedback the medium of gathered info and quantifiable numbers signifying how many parents’ opinions were gathered in the feedback given.
• Those seeking parent feedback/voice will be asked to specify which medium of gathering feedback they are looking for (i.e., survey, poll at parent meetings, etc.) and what portion of the parent body they would like feedback from (i.e., percentage of entire body, specific number of parents, responses from parent group monthly meeting, ets.)

Classroom Ambassadors:

• An Ad Hoc committee will be formed in order to form and coordinate the Classroom Ambassador system
• 1 or 2 parents/guardians for each classroom will be responsible for:

1- Putting together a class call list (once we have sent out forms to gather numbers).

2- Coordinating with the teacher about items or volunteers in the classroom as needed