 Alright, welcome, I'm glad you're all at Cafe College. For those of you who have not been here before, this is your new home handle. Come and visit at any time. My name is Rebecca Gonzalez. I'm the program manager here at Cafe College, which means I'm in charge of a lot of stuff, scheduling, programming, and also inviting people like Geltz to come out in and enjoy our facility. Just to give you some stats for those of you who are not aware, the Cafe College is actually managed by the San Antonio Education Partnership, which has been around since 1988, doing this type of work in the San Antonio community. Since we opened in 2010, we have servers of approximately 24,000 students. That's unduplicated, so we're really proud of the work that we're doing. We're trying to make a difference here in the San Antonio community, and like I said, we invite you to come and visit the center to use it with your students, but also to use it as a meeting space just like this. And I hope that today's conversation is productive. So, enjoy. Thank you. Well, good evening, everyone. I am Rebecca Bergliccio, and I am the director for the Center for Faith-Based and Labor Good Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Education. And we are thrilled to be in San Antonio and asking for your help as we try to deepen our hope around family and community engagement under the banner of Together for Tomorrow. I have with me two members of our team, Michael Robbins, who many of you already know, and Reverend Dr. Kinzadell is trying to hide back there as bad. And so, while we've been here now for two days, we'll be here tomorrow as well. And we're very appreciative of the opportunity to participate in some parts of the Kellogg Foundation's effort this week. We're there also talking about their work to deepen and strengthen family engagement. And so, we know that everyone in the community is an important part of this. We know that children's first teachers are really their family, their parents, the people that they live with, whether they're their biological parents or the hearing adults that surround them. And we know that in this room, some of you are going to have to raise your hand five or six times, but we have critical parts of the community represented in this room tonight. And if we had to put a face on community engagement, on family and community engagement, this room, I think, would represent what that kind of has to look like. Now, I don't know, everyone's fly good things. I have no explanation for why I'm doing it. So, I've never had to do something that I have no explanation for. Is anybody going to have a birthday dinner? Is anybody's birthday dinner? Okay, well, this is everybody's birthday. Because we're being born together into a new relationship, as those who are committed to making sure that this room doesn't die but lives and drives. How many of you are parents of students in the San Antonio or parts of Texas? How many of you are parents in this area? Any of our school leaders, principals, administrators, and teachers? Super good, but that's not good. Board members? Board members? Let's see. Now, okay, here's a lesson. School leaders. Now, let me ask that question again. How many school leaders are in this room? Now, the next time I ask that question, everybody in here cares about what happens in our schools. How many school leaders are in this room? That's what I'm talking about. To find new ways to look at ourselves as we learn to work together to make sure we're creating a climate that says we're all invested in making sure that every child, every family has access to high quality education from cradle to career college. And so, as we go around the country in these listening sessions, we're really just trying to figure out what's already being done as a factor that could be replicated. What can we learn as the federal government that we can use our own property to just share it other places? What have parents experienced and learned that you wish we would listen to? And maybe nobody's ever asked. So we're really asking those questions because we cannot grow and sustain this want to be your partners if your voices are not the voices that are driving us to try to make things better across the nation. We have some great news when we talk about, and we are Obama appointees, and so although this isn't a political meeting, it's important for people to know that one of the reasons we talk so much about what the President has said and wants to do is because we represent him when we're on the road. And he has said, well, that doesn't sound that about the BlackRock rate. But we are glad to support that even though there's still too many BlackRocks, we have fewer BlackRock people. The message is in there that you've got to provide a way for your own future. And education is still the key to that. He has more and more young people now who understand about the health rates that they're eligible and they're really helpful and fast for so that they can apply. And I see some heads nodding, so I'm glad some of you have helped people fill out those applications so that they don't miss opportunities there. Sometimes just a lack of awareness contributes to them not being able to be engaged. We are moving beyond no child left behind. Most of us recognize that there were some bad things about it, but there were some good things. Because some of us would have never probably stopped to evaluate how do you hope people would handle it, but they don't know what the standards are. Now, granted, we've been trying to make lots of changes. We're a stalemate on getting legislation passed, but Arne Dutton and President Obama said, you know, we can't wait for certain things. And so that's why the ESEA flex has been made available and many states have taken advantage of that to the rate to be innovative and creative and still move forward on improving outcomes for children in our educational system. And so for us, this is a really, really exciting time. And we're in the rare position in the signature faith-based and labor partnerships of doing the inside-outside work. We get to break down silos inside of the apartment. We get to go out to the community and hear what you say that gives us strength to go back and work for those things that will help us achieve our shared goals for all of our children. And that's why it's so easy to use this thing. We're trying to work together for tomorrow so that all of our children have the best opportunity. All of our families have the best opportunities. And one of the learnings, the early learnings, is that in many cases the families have not felt welcome or invited into the space of education. It could vary school by school. But what if we could come up with a united voice that may be just naturalist, really, to say, yes, things are our schools. And our means to everybody represented in this group. So faces we may never see. But if the message is out there, everybody will see that our nation is about creating, recreating the culture of academic success and excellence for everyone. And so tonight we're going to spend some time hearing about some of the things that you are doing, some of your dreams, some of your challenges to us, and invite you to see us as partners in this work going forward. So we are really, really excited to announce a new partnership. We have a memorandum of understanding with the National Center for Family Literacy. It just gives me goosebumps because it's an opportunity for us to have somebody working right with us and somebody that we can work right with. 22 years of experience in doing this work. For evidence-based practices, examples of success, that there ought to be on the front page of every newspaper in the nation. And so I am thrilled now to introduce Emily for practically who will share with us and introduce her president. They take a great leadership in this work, and we're going to get sickness in each other. So we're going to do so much stuff together. But this will be a good sickness. This is a happy sickness because we know that if we're not united in our efforts, we will not be as successful as we can be. And all of you are probably doing things that have measures of success. But when we intentionally come together to do this, wow, watch our world. So as we begin to change the world together, I invite you to offer some remarks, Emily, and we're so grateful for the opportunity to partner with you on this. Would you all just celebrate them a little bit? We are here to learn from and to hear from the parents in this room. That's what Greg Sheeran and I think is the greatest joy on behalf of NCFL. Thank you for having us. After we leave here today full of your ideas and input, we encourage you to look at our websites for free tools and tips on books to read with your children, things to do to prepare your entire family for college, or to subscribe to Our Wonder of the Day, something free of charge to read with your children and children that you love every single day. So take a look at family.org and Wonderopolis.org. Sharon, anything you'd like to say? It's just great to be here. I'm Sharon Darling with the National Center for Family Literacy and I can't tell you how excited I am about what's going on in the Department of Education. I mean, I'm old, as you can tell, and I've been through lots of administrations and lots of Department of Education changes, but I've never seen such a passion and commitment to parent engagement as I've seen in this administration with this Department of Education, and particularly with your leadership, Brenda, it's just, and Michael. They are very interested in hearing from you, not just being here because this is the right thing to do. They want to know what it is that the Department should be doing in parent engagement and what's working across the country. And so I'm just so impressed and so excited to be a partner with them in this effort. So, Mike, congratulations to you because this is substantive. This is digging deep. This is deep work, not just this is the right thing to say or the right thing to do. So thank you for your commitment to this. Thank you. And I would say, as I said with Michael, sometimes we're so anxious to get into the program part that little thing yet, that if I help you understand where they're from, I taught elementary school for almost 10 years. I was the president of the teachers union. I was one of those teachers that sometimes, you know, the principal wasn't sure what he was going to do with me. I had a room full of parents. I had room mothers, grandmothers, uncles, cousins. There was never a day that there wasn't an adult in my room just because I just thought that's what I was supposed to do. I taught 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade. My last years in the classroom, I had 4th, 5th, 6th grade split. 39 years, 36 points. Um... But if I hadn't had those adults in the community who were in my room with me who, straight at times, coming in so that I could pay attention to the individual kids, I had other teachers who said, we're going to have to do 29 transformations. And so we started, without anybody's permission, we started passing classes. So somebody was teaching science and somebody was teaching social studies. We just teamed up with each other. And at the end of the school year, we got an award for being innovative. We were surviving. We didn't know any other way to teach. But it benefited the community. Parents weren't afraid to come to the school. They were upset if they didn't get to come. And so now, all of these decades later, to see this as a challenge, I was like, no, I know this is too old. Because we did it and we didn't have the kind of pressure that we have on us now. And so that's part of what drives me because I've seen it work. I benefited from it. I think I was a better teacher as a result of having other people in my room every day. And being able to model what we wanted other families to do. Because our school, our classroom was a thing. And so this is real for us. This is real for us. And we hope that you will make it personal. And when you make it personal, then you can take even some of the shots that may come at you for doing it. But you know that you're doing it because it's going to make a difference in your lives and the lives of those who are far around you. Michael Robbins is a real trooper on this. He has given leadership from our office to make sure we shape the tour that we're taking. He takes a lot of blows on the inside. But I try to give him his kudos because in spite of it, he's on it. He understands the power inside. And he's done this work at various levels. Having been involved in the seed schools. We drive through Washington. Anybody who's been to Washington, DC? Okay. We drive through Washington. Some of the worst neighbors. And Michael said, oh, I used to work up there. Oh, I used to do this in this longer man. I used to pass out flyers. He's a very connected person and has a heart for working with the partners all across this nation. So I want you to welcome Michael. He's going to lead us to the next part of our program. I do want to mention, in case you haven't noticed, that you are on television tonight. This is being live-streamed. And we'll be archived on the web. So... And so when you speak, you can smile into the camera. But do try to speak up. We're going to be hearing from all of you. Secondly, I want to thank the United Way for the food and also for providing simultaneous translation for some folks that have requested it. So do understand that that's also going on. And take a breath every now and then. Right, Eddie? Eddie talks very quickly. So we're going to make her slow down. So I'm going to frame our conversation the way that we've been thinking about family engagement at the department. And then we'll hear from Hedy who will dig in specifically on this issue of attendance and family engagement. We're going to do an interactive activity with Hedy. And then we're going to be hearing from all of you. A few of you I've talked to before and you're ready to speak. I'm going to sneak up on and you'll be speaking anyway. So as you think about what it is that you do, we really are looking at this in three areas. And together for tomorrow we are not separating community and family engagement. We strongly believe that these need to be addressed together and that they accommodate a similar approach and a similar shift where education needs to be seen by everyone's responsibility. And we need better answers to the question, how do I help? And that's going to require a shift in the way that we're working. Too often if any of you had an elementary school student where you get the report card too often schools and they got one of the elementary school report cards they would get an unsatisfactory in place while with others. Right? So we need to change that. Too often on the community side you have a partnership that starts with someone who says well I got money from a foundation to give 20 of your students dance lessons. Can I get to 20 of your students after school? And so we have this mismatch and so part of what we're talking about is how to be aligned needs and resources and really have a better magic conversation between schools and families and communities to one end to focus specifically on two things. Student engagement and academic achievement. So as we look at three areas here and this is the three areas I'd like you to think about the work that you're doing already. We're here in San Antonio because there is a lot of great work doing already that we want a spotlight for the nation. So the first circle is laying the groundwork. The second circle is really making it happen. And the third circle is celebrating and inspiring. So on this first circle laying the groundwork what are the systems that need to be in place? What are the values that need to shift? What are the relationships that need to be built? Who are the people that need to be in place? The capacity piece to make this work. And secondly on the making it happen piece we're focused on what we call the ABCs. We've adapted this for us the ABCs is attendance, behavior, course performance and college access. And so how can partnerships with families be focused on these outcomes that we know that are important for students and are important for schools and are measurable on a regular basis. It's not a standardized test score that you get months of now that you can look back on and maybe or maybe not act on. You know whether or not the child is at school today. You know whether or not they've missed school so far that year placing them in this chronic absence category. So it's ABCs. And then lastly this celebrating and inspiring piece it's the piece that too often gets left out. We're very quick to talk about all the challenges that we face in education but need to be more focused on celebrating our successes. We did a town hall last summer in Las Vegas and the Las Vegas mayor. If you know Carolyn Goodman the mayor of Las Vegas have got to meet her. She is what you might expect from the mayor of Las Vegas. She is blonde hair, bejeweled. She came in in a whirlwind. I talked to her a couple of times on the phone and she comes to me and introduces herself in person. She says I'm sorry I have to calm down. I was just at this meeting of wedding planners and we were talking about all these exciting out of the box things we did with wedding planning in Las Vegas and now we're talking about something very serious education. I just have to tone it down. I told her if you could take the same energy that you had in that room that you just left and put it to what we're trying to do here we're going to be a lot farther along to try to get this work done. So let's think about the best parties, think about the best celebrations, think about the best recognitions that you have ever been a part of and then let's weave that into our work on family and community engagement. So thinking about those three areas. I'm going to turn now to Heddy Chang. We were able to recognize Heddy at the White House recently as one of our champions of change in education for her work particularly with African-American communities. Her work on attendance is a key piece of this ABC and she has some exciting news to share with us. Great. Thank you so much. I'm Antonio for inviting me here. Gathering and had a wonderful chance to see Alvance this morning. What an inspiring local homegrown story of success. IDRA was also being one of the site visits and so it's such a pleasure because I know what incredible work you have going on. We had the privilege of hearing from your mayor yesterday and his vision for a much better world for all our kids. I'm actually going to talk as Michael mentioned these ABCs, attendance behavior, course failure and I also see City Year in the room so this is near and dear to you all in San Antonio. But this issue of attendance is actually one of those measures that you can actually bring down to the very early ages to use as a sign of whether kids are on the path for reading at grade level by the end of third grade if you don't get there by the end of third grade it gets pretty tough in fourth grade when they expect that you're going to be able to read to learn all your subjects and by the time kids are in middle and high school attendance along with behavior and course failure become key warning signs for dropout. But I want to do a little exercise and I know we're on camera but I need three of you to volunteer to help me out and you're going to come into this middle section here so I'm going to could you all please something that the three of you will stand up I promise I will invite and I just need three of you to so thank you all two more people next to you for Rufus Rufus and Angie and Paul okay so what I want you to imagine is that Rufus, Angie and Paul are all five years old and this is their first day of kindergarten okay and we want to look at how ready they are to really take advantage of that kindergarten experience what is here though, one of the challenges is that Rufus you know your mayor hasn't gotten preschool for all in San Antonio yet so he didn't even get a chance to go to preschool so you're going to take eight little steps but take eight little steps back into your bridge but Angie right Angie well she went to preschool she's there, she's ready Paul on the other hand well Paul he went to preschool but you know what Paul missed so much preschool he got kicked out of the preschool program I want to support you better take my step back because you only partially benefit from preschool now we're on our first year of kindergarten and I like you all to take eight little steps because this is not that long of a room forward to represent an enormous learning that you got in kindergarten what's for Rufus and Paul they didn't go to preschool and then they never really developed a habit of attendance going every day in preschool so they didn't even have a habit of going to kindergarten very much and so they missed, they were chronically absent from kindergarten so I'm sorry can you each take two steps backwards and then we got to the summer and you know time on task in the summer in a literacy rich environment is really important still but Rufus unfortunately couldn't find anything so you know what he not only didn't get a chance to progress but he actually fell back two more months and here she went to this great program and she got even more pumped up taking the steps forward she got there and even progressed a little so now we're in second grade can you all take eight steps forward on the exercise but you all get the point and what you're now seeing is a difference in third grade reading yes thank you the dog research part is that no matter how good your instruction is in class it doesn't make that much of a difference if the kids aren't there in class to benefit from it, right so if you all are for example going to invest in preschool for all in San Antonio make sure that you've invested this and that kids benefit from it and you're using this to build a habit of attendance that will help kids do well in school, in the workplace one of the things I think we have to shift is we think about attendance in the wrong way we think about attendance as compliance it's about our compulsory ed laws you didn't attend school so I'm going to threaten you with the law and you were somehow bad because you didn't attend school or we and living California like here we think about attendance as we're filling out these sheets because we need it for our funding, right and this is what keeps school funding now while that may be true the most important thing about attendance is that when kids are absent it's a lost opportunity to learn while a child is in the classroom and the truth is is that if a kid misses too much school which is what we have for research 18 days or more over the course of a year for any reason it can be for things that we understand why kids would miss it's very hard to catch up if you have two years of missing school pre-K and K your chances of reading a third grade are very slim it gets and by the time kids get older it can be a sign of disengagement now what we do know is that there are at least three kinds of reasons why kids miss school one is actually we're all affected by miss and parents as community members even educators sometimes we don't realize that absence is add up we think it's all about unexcused it's not just that it's absence is add up and if too many occur you're going to fall behind and you know what this isn't just the middle and high school issue this is starting as early as pre-K and K or we think it's all consecutive absence not the kid who misses once every two weeks it's also a problem the other issue is that sometimes when absences are happening it's because there are barriers you can't get healthcare you can't get access to transportation to school you've got too much community violence and when that happens you've got to look at all those absences adding up and find out what are those barriers and find out from parents and kids what's getting in the way of them getting to school and then sometimes I also want to put out there absences are about a version they are sometimes because the school program is not working for those kids it's not engaging and then we have to figure out whether we have teachers who really need professional development or support or sometimes in the haze area with young kids it's when kids are anxious and we don't have a way to transition them to school and they're staying every day what happens when kids are nervous you guys know this, mommy I've got a stomach ache and it comes all out as excused absences this is where parents can make a huge difference but we got to engage in interactive different kinds of activities that help parents both see the role that they can play by monitoring their kids data by looking at data for schools by calling for the data by making sure that schools are aware of the barriers to keep kids from getting to school and advocating for solutions when we need them and what I'm going to hand out to you all is we have just launched today this event there's two things on here one is actually a parent engagement toolkit with interactive activities this is downloadable for free and there's also our call which is trying to get everyone to think about this September as a time for building that culture and awareness of attendance it's just a start but it's an easy start and it's not Antonio I challenge you all to launch September at the Tenants Awareness Month and you can find these on our website and please join us this campaign is actually with America's Promise Alliance a campaign for grade level reading civic enterprise and the points of light so thank you so much for the opportunity and I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from you today about what will help keep parents engaged in school and help attendants is one of those things that we can provide support to you and also learn from you thank you any questions if anyone has a question for Hedy? alright we'll have time for conversation as we move forward as I said this was an opportunity here because of the new framework that's released I wanted to take advantage of Hedy being in town for us to spotlight attendance now we're turning to you this is our opportunity to learn from you this is your opportunity to learn from each other we find that so much of what happens when we go places is that we have two of the same communities who are meeting each other for the first time we're hearing about things for the first time we're here in San Antonio because of the good work that's already happening I'd like to turn first to our friends at the United Way Katie's I think going to speak a year and a half and here just a couple minutes on some of the highlights of your work on family partnership thank you so much for hosting this really critical conversation I also want to thank all of our parents here tonight thank y'all for coming out we appreciate it I want to thank the community center as well as Family Service Association Nancy Martin is here I saw her earlier this year they are community partners in this we could not do it without y'all thank you I also want to thank our volunteers there's a Barbara Gentry here and of course we have Becky Robinson from SouthSan I'm going to talk about it a little bit later and we have partnerships with many many entities here so we really can't do this alone I want to start off on that because this partnership is about truly partnering and putting our money around this and of course SAISD how could I forget Janice Hammond and all of your support throughout this work the parent engagement work that we've been on for the last seven years but of course I also want to hear from parents so please talk with you if I get something wrong or I misspeak here the mission of our partnership is to increase academic success and overall graduation rate to Santa Antonio through parent engagement we really do put our money where our mouth is in terms of having this need parent driven have driven every component of this work since inception they've worked with us at every level be it at the budget level overall at the individual campus budget level to the leadership development piece to home visits etc etc there are four main components of our model and I'm going to talk sort of broader and then go into some of the changes we've seen in SAISD but the first and most important are these parent to parent home visits this is really the backbone of our work these are non punitive home visits they blanket entire grades with the blanket approach and it's parents reaching out to other parents there are no staff members not a teacher involved it's parents reaching out to other parents asking how's it going how's your child doing at school this year that produces a very very different conversation when a lot of folks have experiences with home visits that are not necessarily in a positive light so we find that folks are much more willing to open up and the parents end up tracking information and data and they share it with the principal and the principal in the school is able to shift and react in a way that they wouldn't be able to otherwise without this strong and realistic feedback from the community the other piece of this partnership that's super critical is a parent room this is a space that is on campus at the classroom sized space that the parents manage in partnership with the partner agency family service association across the community but this becomes a bridge between the neighborhood community and the school community and it really is a great segue to bring parents in and make them feel comfortable on campus again the parents drive it so they make it warm they decorate it in the rooms we have emergency food we have transportation systems we have resources across the community that the parents have vetted we have resources that they don't know works we also have leadership development so again when this first started having a space at the table for parents is critical but the parents told us we want to be here but we need a couple of tools to be fully present at this table so the parents work with our volunteers very closely to develop plans each year around leadership development and they change annually because we know that nothing is stagnant in life or in education so we are able to react and respond to the needs as they happen and then as we were discussing earlier celebration celebration is a big piece of this work and I agree we do have we're quick to jump to tough issues not so much to the good things so celebrations are the key component of this work celebrating campus-wide and student success parents put on events that have hundreds of people in attendance that principal can't get folks in the door and the parents have that magic natural networking available to them and they make it happen and they see everyone shaking their heads so parents as leaders is critical to this work and again we could not, this partnership would not happen without the support of our partner agencies present and family service they support the parents as they develop into leaders but again the parents drive it wholeheartedly you know we know that a lot of families that we work with in our schools they've experienced some long-term stress and that makes a significant impact in terms of how comfortable they feel within the school how much time they have how they see and perceive their own role as a parent and so when the agencies support our parent leaders to reach out to other parents as role models and as examples please come and join us this is important for you to be here again we see transformation at a significant level it's truly magical to see and we've seen a lot of parents we have a couple of recent graduates in the crowd I won't point you out but a lot of parents return to their own education and that triple down effect is inevitable in terms of students and kids seeing their parents go back to school and value education and I think some of this partnership has also helped to rebuild people's trust in schools and they see other parents in the schools are much more willing and able to come in and we've seen a systems change I think at the community level we have shifted and I think Family Service Impressions have as well organizationally a way to do for and more towards doing with understanding that if we do for it does not have the same impact as doing with so we've shifted that at the system level on them the schools have changed significantly we have principals who meet with parents on a monthly basis who welcome people in a way that they hadn't before simply because they hadn't seen the impact that parents driving the work could have on inviting other parents in and then at the family system level you know again as I mentioned we have countless parents who go on to school themselves who who get hired because of the leadership development support from the agencies into full time professions and that impact on the family is absolutely incredible so that's sort of my 30,000 foot snap in a very complex system but I would love to answer any questions you all may have and of course I would love to hear from the parents as well thanks Michael there's parents that would like to add to that and then we can come back to general questions and get them to discussion I can add on something to what Kay is saying in probably seeing the changes within the schools I've had the opportunity so far within the last few years I've been reading the schools I've really seen the transition from the teachers and the administration in working with parents it's no longer oh here we have parent volunteers here I need to do this this and this I have parents here who are you know they have ideas we have ideas let's combine these ideas to come up with something that's even better that's going to benefit our teachers that's going to benefit our schools that's going to benefit our students and the benefit of our community so you see this whole different level of engagement where it's not the fact that she's saying we have this event we want to do you guys do it and it's up to parents saying I have this idea I'm going to do this I just want your permission to say I have this idea well you know from that idea I have this idea and then it turns something else so much better than the original idea so it's really a complete shift in engagement with faculty and staff with parents I'd like to add one other component I'd like to say I'm from Canada from the Board said I had already 100-something campuses that we have one of the things that we definitely come from the Board to a superintendent all the way down to our campuses was the emphasis on how we create family from these schools so we do things that most individuals may in line of our schools now have that consideration even little things on where does everybody park at having all the right across we should allow our family members to be there even how we feel our cafeteria located inside our schools consider that concept at one time the other thing that I'm speaking for the other digits also we try to open up the schools now hope that everybody knows that little things, soccer team is a practice PTA and others but other community groups as parents are going to be involved that's something that's done and you're with SA9 State? Northside one of the things I forgot to mention but I think it's incredible Andy you kind of reminded me that you guys are really pioneers they actually hire parents so not only do we have parent volunteers driving the model but the staff that's in place to support them begin as parents so I wanted to bring that up because I think it's hugely important to recognize in terms of an economic and development model so this sort of lay in the ground where there's both pain and stipend and volunteer staff in place in the school there's partner organizations space considerations whether it's the partner for parents or the way you design the school or making sure that you have a parent resource room so that you have an anchor spot for this work to happen so there's an interesting common things coming out I'd like to turn for a second do we have folks here from the COPS Metro program do you take a couple minutes just to talk top level about your work yeah I'm the lead organizer with COPS Metro Alliance organization affiliated with the Australia Foundation we do community organizing with congregations primarily we've also worked with teacher unions and schools in the past for a long time in Texas we did the model we call the alliance like most a lot like what United Way is doing now engaging parents and bringing the model of organizing and congregations as the center of the community to the school you know there are few institutions that are considered center of a community like the congregation for the public school in parts of our city the congregation is becoming less sometimes the center of the community and the school is becoming even more important as that institution so we've been working again with some schools and some congregations that are already engaged with their school Reverend Wood is one of them who's working with an inward school what we're trying to do in many ways we're going to change the culture of the school to create a culture of trust you know one of the problems that we have in our schools is that when you look at rankings like what came out this week on Texas schools is that there's a lot of finger pointing there's a lot of blame well it's clearly the parents don't care or the principal is going to add the teacher is going to do this what we're trying to figure out is how do we make everybody an equal staple but what we have is a very unequal power relationships between the principal and the teacher and the parents so we're trying to figure out how do we change those relationships whether we foster trust and sometimes that starts by working together on things that don't have anything to do with an achievement sometimes you've got to work on things but the parents want to work on it when I first got sent I'm talking about five years ago I was working with a school in the south and the principal arranged for me to meet with 20 parents all moms so I met with all 20 of them one by one and the principal was very excited because he said you know really want to get his parents to help you on an achievement nobody when I asked him what they care about he wanted to work on math they were concerned that kids crossing were in danger of getting run over and so there was no science and there was a school there the amount of patrol would constantly get ignored and so they were more concerned it's not that they didn't care about the school but when you ran the chance of the kid getting run over or meeting at grade level so that goes to the top and so we started working on that we organized those parents that met with their council members and they put together a plan and so now you ride down there and you see appropriate signs and so now they see the principal and the teachers as partners and now they can work on the next thing together so that's what we're trying to figure out is how do we bring the model that we've been working for 40 years since I've turned in which is organizing institutionally from the congregation now to the school experience fantastic thank you we have Eddie here from leadership SAISD you shared a couple of minutes on your work absolutely thank you and again thank you for bringing us all together it's not it's not often enough that we do get in the room and share ideas and share stories so thank you very much to the department of education like Michael said I'm the executive director of leadership SAISD we are an independent non-profit organization so we sit independently of the San Antonio Independent School District our organization essentially is born from a very common idea every single person every single member of our community within SAISD wants our district to be as successful as possible nobody's going to argue with that same with North Side, same with Northeast everybody in San Antonio has a stake in the successful school district and there are thousands of people across our city across our district working for that and every single day teachers, parents, community members everybody and there are many more that would like to do that but perhaps don't know where to plug in or perhaps are so daunted by the complexity of education in San Antonio or nationally that they don't know where to start so that's where our organization comes in the heart of our organization and the heart of our programming is a six month course that runs civically minded community members through the nuts and bolts of the school district so for example we started off this year this is our first cohort we started off with what education would look like in the 21st century we had incredible partners from a school district superintendent Sylvester Fettis came in board chair at Garza came in several members from the nonprofit community came in to give our participants our 35 participants an idea of what education in the 21st century would look like additionally we've gone through other topics from equity diversity in the achievement gap to school testing high stakes testing and accountability we've gone through very dense and complex issues like education law and regulatory bodies school finance was our latest the labyrinth of school finances as our presenters made very clear and we're going to wrap up this year with a seminar on community support and engagement so that our participants have an idea of how they can go forward and stay engaged ultimately our vision for San Antonio and SAIC generally is to have a community of shared responsibility made up of empowered folks that really understand where the key levers are within a school district what the limitations are within a school district where the allies are within a school district and essentially how we can all work together to get to that point where our district is as successful as possible so that's sort of the overview of our coverage great thank you a lot of what we're spending time on now looking at how digital learning transitions can change the way that schools and families and community organizations all work together and as we look at digital learning as we look at blended learning where part of this is expanding this world of anytime anywhere learning we know that we have unprecedented investment on the technology side but we don't yet have the investment on the family supports, the student supports and the community infrastructure side up to make these transitions successful as we look to the range of institutions that has real assets for family engagement particularly around anytime anywhere learning our arts and cultural institutions our libraries our real critical partners do we have folks here from the San Antonio Library or the San Antonio Museum could you share with us a little bit about your work with family engagement and education to be here and we've done a lot of great work with Katie and the workers in the United Way and then also with Jean McCormack in the P16 plus council here in San Antonio and what we work on at the museum is similar to some of the concepts that Katie's actually modeled for us we've copied some of the United Way methodology here and we have partnered with P16 on the family engagement side to help teach our community that San Antonio can be your classroom so it's beyond the classroom you know it's traditionally defined as school and we'd like the museum to be known as learning an enjoyable destination in San Antonio for all of our family so we've built around the school group tour which many museums do they bring kids in for a 45 minute or an hour long tour and what we've done beyond that is we've scheduled these family activities quarterly, approximately where we invite the entire family students that have been coming on school group tours to the museum for a really engaging day their teachers are there their principals there, oftentimes their superintendents they're a special welcome as well we're all there our staff and volunteers too and so it's a way to let the families know that the museum's resource for their family is accessible it's welcoming and most of these are first time visitors and the feedback that we've been getting as they leave has been tremendous they're leaving with those messages the museum is a partner for them in education, it's free it's accessible, it's welcoming and wants to be just a partner in their family's education so it's been a great way to build on the school group tours by engaging the entire family and trying to create a culture of the museum going I know we also have some folks from the private sector here from businesses engaged in this work is there anyone from that sector that would like to share some of the work that you're doing related to family engagement and education if you're hiding, we will find you we have a number of folks from school boys here from school district administration I'm interested in a couple things first of all, are there things, commonalities in what you're doing in your own districts from what you've heard, do you talk about what's resonated and then, what are the things that you'd like to share with us I'll go ahead and start it seems to be on the superintendent in the house today I'm Becky Robinson and I'm actually from South San Antonio and it's the South San so we're actually partnering with the United Way for next year so we're hoping to open up three parent centers but let me tell you what we have done this year I actually started in June in 2017 so I haven't even been on the doubt for a year but one of the things coming into South San that we saw and seen in the community in San Antonio is that there was a great need for educating our parents and so in order for our kids to be able to succeed we've got to educate our parent it's a partnership, it's not about school it's not about parents, it's about a partnership coming together and in essence hopefully we'll get a better product coming and graduating and sending to college but one of the things that we did and we were trying not to do this until next year but we felt that it was such an urgent need that we actually opened up our own parent community center at South San and so we actually opened it up February the 14th and so basically right now we're offering free of service we cannot charge our parents to go out here we thought that our parents were going to go during the day to see us and accept our classes but what we have found that the parents actually want to go at night and so basically we're opening up all the way to 8 o'clock at night we have about 75 parents right now that are going to be in some classes no charge we're in GV classes no charge we're also finding out that a lot of our population didn't even have an email they had no access to email or computers and so through our technology department and through some of our staff we've been able to offer some of those services and so we actually have parents that have come in and we've set up their email accounts and have started showing them how to do Microsoft Office real simple real basic things and so those are some things that we're doing there was a big interest on Zumba so we're running Zumba classes and so we're basically kind of preparing our parents right now what are some of the things that you kind of want us to do every single director that has a responsibility to conduct some kind of a workshop so we do literacy early literacy circles with our parents we do science math at home so we try to do some of these activities that are fun and the parents can do at home and let us worry about the complexities of the problem solving let us just work on the simple things that the parents can work on at home because over at the party if any of you have ever tried doing some of that math homework so because these letters leave that to us but we certainly do want to teach you and we kind of want to educate our parents this is what to expect this is the things that your kids are going through and so we've been doing February, March, April, May right now we decided to close July and open up in August just to give us a little breather but we have a big one of the things that I told you about that we really wanted to see was to have a huge current conference at our district and we actually chose already the first Saturday in December we're actually opening up and we're going to have invited everybody that has anything to do with family services for the community and have provide information to the parents and then we're going to provide all of these workshops that they can actually go to and get around to just a simple break just like that are great and then do a small little and do a celebration of how many parents and of course it all has to be competitive because the competitiveness that we have and so we kind of want to award the schools that have the most parents present and so we really wanted to make it a family affair and I think working together in partnerships that is so important because it's not about family and school it's about people working together for the betterment of the kids that's what we're going to talk about thank you thank you thank you thank you I feel so strongly about the criminal involvement I think we see it on a daily basis our schools that have the heavier criminal involvement in our successful schools like Bobby said and our districts are quite large but they are in my propulsion of Texas we're wealthy, we're poor we're large and we're small and it doesn't matter what the school is the more we see the parents in our schools the more they're a part of our team the better outcome for all of us for our children, for our teachers for our administration they need all the help that they can get for this economy too so we love having them as part of our teams we can come back to some of the other school board and school staff I wanted to turn to one of our five-year-olds here Paul, can you talk about your engagement with families a little bit about the city or model for those folks that may not be familiar sure privileged to be here also and if you look in the upper right-hand corner of the Together for Tomorrow banner that's the Corporation for National and Community Service and that's the parent organization of City Year so it's an AmeriCorps organization like the School Turnaround AmeriCorps Teach for America some other organizations focused on the fact that there are tens of thousands of people that want to be full-time volunteers working in our schools to help with things like attendance increased attendance better behavior and succeeding in our courses and college readiness but also interacting with our with our parents in our community so what we do is our remember these are full-time volunteers so they're going to show up at the schools before the first child arrives they're going to be engaging with the parents as they drop off kids whoever shows up parent being all of those people that are advocates for and caring for the children that are coming to our schools so they're going to have interaction with them immediately as they're coming to school and then they're going to find out who didn't show up at school and they're going to make phone calls maybe send a letter and that letter is not only going to be hey we missed you but the letter might be so it's a positive appreciation type of letter we're going to help support whatever organizations are going to actually go home to home so we might be the very person that helps some of the parents do the home visits because they have a lot of energy these full-time volunteers and then we're going to help throughout the day with the teachers but we might be an interpreter to the parents we're kind of at another bridge with the parents and we're going to have interaction with them because we're not intimidating our sole purpose is to have these full-time volunteers that are about college age help interpret, help support help advocate for do all the things that can really be beneficial to the family and to the child after school again we're still going to be there so now parents are coming back to pick up their child or we're writing letters home because we want to support, advocate for, appreciate Saturdays we're going to make sure that we have like events where there's occasions for parents to come out and be part of the community so a good example of that might be a block party it might be building green spaces around our school community it might be making sure that kids that have not had playgrounds have a playground and we're going to make sure that parents come out to that so our main purpose really is to be the human capital with our schools and our community and I guess our exit strategy would be that when there are parents in community that are so engaged in the schools they don't really need a full-time volunteer at that school anymore because we might have a team of 10 or 15 that are really dedicated at school but now there's such great parent and community engagement that they are part of the fabric of that school and we can maybe move elsewhere where they don't have quite that kind of pattern so here we have a community partner that sees family engagement as key to its exit strategy sustainability right? we all bat around this term sustainability when we write great applications when we start programs but here we can look at that as a way to really make it real for the long term of the school another community partner we have here another one of our 5 year olds communities and schools Rufus I'm Rufus the communities and schools model is essentially that we place a full-time committed individual into a school and the job of that person is to act as a super connector just to give you an idea of what we do we target and we assist students that are identified in conjunction with the school as being the most at risk of underperforming or not reaching that fullest potential last year we were in 72 different schools in and around Bayer County we served 7,631 students again most at risk students and of those kids 98% staying in school but what's important for me to mention here is all we did was connect those students and their families and the other people in the group that's our job, that's what we do we work with the school, we work with the other agencies in this room and we try and connect together the best resources that Taylor made to fit those students I could plug CIS forever but I won't just now Hi, I'm Rufus I'm an educator for the last 15 years and I'm a parent for the last 10 and I want to plant a seed that's a little bit provocative and that is to let you know that we talk about the dropout crisis Brenda, you said something earlier that really inspired me, you talked about fear these two big words in education are fear and trust and those are the two words that we need to as an educator as educators in the room you teach children to learn from their mistakes that's one of the most effective ways to teach about the dropout crisis but one thing we're not doing is this my name is Rufus, I'm a parent dropout what I mean by that is I have three children I've been a parent for 10 years and through circumstance not choice, I fail my children I'm a divorcee I don't get to be with my children 100% of the time so they're missing something very important to them to go to the comment made earlier about basic needs I want to see my mom I can't do anything about that how can I get them to focus on doing their homework so I go to school meetings they all go to SISD schools and I'm not your typical SISD parent you know, I'm this white guy with an English accent people somehow imbue me with a sense of intelligence that I don't have but the point is I'm just another parent there and it's my responsibility to say I'm just another parent, let's work together you know, I'm also a guy and looking around the room there's another issue that we have we're less than one fourth of the members of this room are men and yet about half I'm pretty sure it's about half of the kids in school that are struggling are probably boys so I want to encourage everyone to keep this conversation going going now and to really take ownership of the involvement in the dropout crisis because we are men and we need to learn from it so I'll shut up I'll sit down thank you Rip is next to you we have Sam, Sam are you a dad too? not yet, hopefully soon my wife's a teacher Sam is here from idea public schools we're fortunate to have them represented I think we have a couple of your colleagues as well there are not a lot of opportunities the federal U.S. Department of Education has to drive change on a local level and one of the things that we've done obviously is look at how we can take relatively small pots of discretionary funding and use them to get the best ideas from communities to try to raise the bar about what's possible we've done that through our investing innovation program we've done that through our Race to the Top initiative our last round of Race to the Top was Race to the Top District which was different than our previous ones it was focused on on local opportunities by local school districts or consortia of districts idea public schools won one of those Race to the Top district grants which had a priority on personalized learning and community and family partnerships you can just talk a little bit about what your approach is and then maybe some of the things that you are struggling with as a school great, thanks so I'm Sam Gessling with idea our executive director here in San Antonio I leave our lead our development and external work and we come here very humbly at idea we have 13,000 students we have 28 schools most of which are in the Rio Grande Valley where we started about 12 years ago with one school and since then we've grown into 28 and we've focused on having our low-income students go to and through college and Rolando and our both former idea teachers and former principals and we've seen a lot of the success that our students have had but we've also seen that we've struggled to kind of help our students outside of the classroom and when we wrote our Race to the Top grant and we're very appreciative to the Department of Education for the opportunity we wrote the grant with the idea of trying to find ways to help our students when they come to school be really ready for the school day because we put a lot of pressure on our teachers and our school leaders to we have a no excuses mindset we have the core value of whatever it takes to really help our students achieve during the day but we realize that we can't do that within just the school walls we need the help of parents we need the help of community leaders we need the help of people in the community with our students so we come here tonight and I'm already learning quite a bit about things that we can do to really partner with parents one of the things that we're doing is working with Rufus' organization communities and schools through our grant we have a partnership at the high school that I led we actually wrote into the grant we wanted to bring communities and schools into our schools both for proactive reasons and reactive reasons we have students who struggle with drug use students who struggle with pregnancy and we wanted to help those students so the community schools team is incredibly helpful in finding resources in the community to help them out and then also helping the kids to be proactive to think about those things so we're going to expand that program across our region, across our schools we're also looking to partner with communities and find out what's out there within the Rio Grande Valley within the San Antonio, within the Austin community where we are to find out what organizations we can partner with so the first part of our work is our parents, our students, our teachers and really finding out what some of the needs are but also with some of the qualities and attributes and just successful organizations that are out there that can help us out I'm really excited to kind of dive into this work it's something that is really in some ways new to us at IDA I think that we've done it in sporadic instances for example as a principal I used to work with Producto Estecca in terms of some of the housing needs for our students and then some of the local doctors in the area to help our students out with dental needs but it was kind of a sporadic approach and we're hoping to do it as a much more broader vision across all of our schools do you want to add anything for San Antonio? I think the only thing is the mission of college for our children I thought it was a very good summary but I love that we're talking about families and schools and faith so I guess you don't mind me using a proverb there's a proverb that says there's a way a path that seems right to man but it leads him to destruction and I think a lot of our young people end up feeling like they're on the right path but in reality they're going far away from education they're going far away from good decisions they're going far away from prosperity and from success so at IDA we really invest a lot of time on the front end creating a powerful learning culture powerful learning environment we write goals around things like attendance persistence we want every child to persist with us from August to August on track to graduate and exemplary a few other goals that we set and so we figure that if we put these milestones down and then monitor the progress towards those milestones throughout the year eventually we can get and push every single child to college we have pushed or sent six graduating classes of seniors with 100% college matriculation our seventh class has just gotten the last acceptance and the hard work this summer begins in converting that college acceptance to a college matriculation it starts with a simple belief for us that every child has value, every child can learn and every child is actually college material but we feel very blessed to be here today to just kind of take as much in from you guys we've taken a lot of notes like Sam says and we're trying to learn as much as we can great, thank you I'd like to shift a little bit and have about five minutes of discussion in pairs or in triads so if you could turn to someone next to you what are one or two things that you've heard today that really strike you as great ideas that we need to see more of and the second question is what was it present today what are the things that aren't happening that you think we also need to be doing around family and school collaborations so the two things again what's great that you've heard here and the second is what are we missing what else needs to happen well it is age 14 we will go until age 20 with this and then come back up with some short discussion in Q&A I think we're here today what else we're going to have to check it out yes she's sitting here she's sitting here we're going to have a Q&A yeah and are the you and me with the child here we have about so it's like after work evening so the needs to happen to the child here so I wouldn't say his question I was thinking about I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I