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Posted by:
Richard Garcia
Building admin/coordinator
Boulder, CO
Topic:
Creating more work for a school principa
Message:
I administer a middle school and a charter school on top of that. s many people know or may not know, Charter schools are run on a bare-bones budget. Every penny is used to pay our faculty, pay the rent and purchase the little materials that we can squeeze out of our budget. In charter schools we depend a lot on parental involvement, community involvement and volunteers from all walks of life. I believe that the utilization of as many of these resources the job of the administartor can be easie. Of course it will take a little maaging, but if you can train one of your most involved parents to be the manager of these resources , it wil take it off of your hands. Who could that person be? I'm sure that any dministraor could easily figure this one out. I was told one time by a vry wise woman, if you want to get a prson that you can depend on get the one that is the busiest. You se this person has developed a system to continue his or her busy schedule. The perents if you have limited resource could become your aftr school progra. The community people could be contracted to provide some classes. We do this at Sojourner, we offer what we call explore classes, these can take any sahpe or form. We leave it up to the community volunteer or the paid valounteer to design the the class, and teach it. We have had some wonderful classes from theatre to drumming to cooking to hiar styling to karate to fencing. These are uasually offered as ten week calsses. It helps us fullfill our electives.
The parents are also asked to participate in theis process. By coming to the school and doing all of these neat things we also are able to provide them with a btter look at what sme of the issues are pertaining to discipline. The parents often times see their own child acting out and can help us in correcting some of the negative behavior. By and larg the parental involvement is usually pretty positive.
In the past, parental involvement was seen as intimidation. Teachers wee often intimidated when parents would want to come and visit. They would feel even more intimadted if they came in unannounced. This shouldn't be the case. Look at it positively, engage them in the deep aspects of school governance. Include them in curriculum decisions, hiring,invite hem to staff inservices. et them look at what goes on during a staff inservice. many times parents complain. because they don't know what goes on at these inservices
Get them in and get them involved!
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