Parenting - Helping schools understand families and helping families understand child and adolescent development and how to set a home environments that support children as students at each grade level. 

Communicating - Communicate with families about school programs and student progress and engage in the ongoing work of strengthening home-to-school and school-to-home (two-way) communications. 

Volunteering - Improve recruitment, training, and scheduling to involve families as volunteers, audience members in and out of school building to support students and school programs. 

Learning at Home - Share resources and information that involve families in their children’s learning at home, including homework, curriculum-related activities, and course and programmatic decisions. 

Decision Making - Include families as participants in school decisions, governance and advocacy through committees, actions teams, PTA, school councils and other parent organizations. 

Collaborating with the Community - Coordinate community resources and services for students, families and the school with businesses, agencies and groups to provide services to the community. 

For more information on the Epstein Framework’s 6 Types, including practices, overcoming challenges and expected results for both students and schools visit John Hopkins University’s National Network of Partnership School.

 

The second framework guiding the district’s work is the Dual Capacity Framework, which is also embraced by both the US Department of Education and the National PTA. This framework clarifies how and why partnership pathways with families are formed. The Dual Capacity Framework is a collaborative approach that outlines how families and staff can learn from one another to build the needed skills, confidence and capacity to support school improvement and student success. For more information on the Dual Capacity Framework visit www.dualcapacity.org.