Community Engagement Updates

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September, 2024

Strategic Plan: Learning for All

Our learners are engaged in authentic, challenging, and relevant learning experiences, becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our dynamic and diverse society.

VISION

Working together as a team, we will end the predictive value of race, class, gender, and special capacities for our children’s success through high-quality teaching and learning for all. We seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds.

We will know every student.

MISSION

• Equity
• We will provide every student with the level of support necessary to thrive
• Excellence
• We will mitigate barriers and provide opportunities for every student to be academically successful
• Family and Community
• We will engage with and share the responsibility for student success with families and community partners
• Wellness
• We will support the physical and emotional health of our students and staff

VALUES

Strategic Plan: Learning for All Goals

Thriving

Students

Equitable, Transformative Resources

Affirming and Empowering Communities

ACPS will facilitate learning experiences grounded in high expectations, networks of care, and student curiosity to ensure academic and social-emotional development for all students while eliminating opportunity, access, and achievement gaps.

ACPS commits to developing a culturally-responsive environment that will respect and champion the diversity of life experiences of all stakeholders and supports the physical and mental health of our students, staff, and families so they are actively empowered to engage in our school community.

ACPS will attract, develop, and retain the highest quality staff; develop sustainable and modern facilities, infrastructure, and equipment; and distribute all resources in an equitable manner to transform learning experiences and opportunities.

ACPS 2025-26 Initiatives

Review

ACPS Initiatives (SY 2024-25)

• HMH Into Reading Virginia: This program is part of our compliance with Virginia's Literacy Act and has broad support from educators and families.
• New Mathematics Curriculum: With the rollout of new Standards of Learning for Mathematics in Virginia, we will be selecting a new mathematics curriculum and materials to launch in 2025-26.
• Communities in Schools Partnership: To support our students and families with basic needs and services, we are partnering with Communities in Schools.

• Transformation Schools: To provide resources, planning services, data analysis, collaborative oversight and accountability for our schools facing accreditation and achievement challenges, we are launching an internal program called Transformation Schools. This initiative will help these schools improve and meet their goals.
• Cell Phone Free Teaching & Learning: This initiative addresses the mental health issues linked to social media and cell phone addiction, particularly the rising rates of depression and anxiety among youth.

SY 2023-24 Initiatives

Review

Review of Last Year

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Initiatives:

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• Communities in Schools
• Family Engagement Events
• Math, Reading, Multicultural, Science & Social Studies/Social Emotional
• Secondary: Key transitions, college/career support
• Community-school events
• Student Senate
• Student School Board Reps
• Volunteers & Community Partners
• Community Information Sessions
• Podcast: Engage ACPS!
• Chronic Absenteeism
• Pulse Surveys (more)
• Coordinating Immunizations and Health Clinics & Dental Mobile Clinics

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• Collaborating with departments for equity:
• Communications (i.e. Remind)
• Instruction-informing pathways and ensuring voice
• Technology
• ABAR Policy Management
• Middle School Advisory Lessons
• For Families Page
• Madison House/ACPS Partnership
• School Champion
• Student Leadership Summit
• Senior Stay Day
• School & Community Health

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SY 25-26 Goals

Overview

OCE & CIS Strategic School Improvement Goal

OCE & CIS Wildly Important Goal (WIG) Focused on Chronic Absenteeism

WIG #1 : Improve chronic absenteeism to below pre-pandemic levels (below 10%) through an integrated system of support and guidance from the division to all schools.

Lead Measures

• Attendance rates will show improvement over last year for each quarter across schools.
• OCE will develop a monthly dashboard that shows attendance rates and chronic absenteeism at each school, allowing for strategic adjustments to support throughout the school year.
• OCE will hold a monthly division level attendance team meetings & CIS monthly meetings to review attendance data and determine supports to provide schools identified in the lowest quartile for attendance.

Progress Monitoring

OCE will use data analysis from last year as a foundation to develop a monthly report to review as a division-level attendance team so that we know if we are on track to meet the pre-pandemic attendance goal and can make adjustments accordingly

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OCE & CIS Strategic School Improvement Goal

OCE & CIS Wildly Important Goal (WIG)

Grow Enrollment equitably in ACPS’s Scholar Studios for SY2526 through effective community engagement

Lead Measures

• Pulse Surveys of 8th grade families will show increased awareness of opportunities to enroll in scholars studio.
• Requests for Scholar Program Gateway courses will show increases from the previous year. We will monitor this metric through the winter and spring.
• Pulse Surveys of 8th grade counselors will show increased awareness about Scholas Studios and opportunities in the program

Progress Monitoring OCE will hold monthly meetings to discuss a communications plan, at times inviting members of other departments, around Scholar Studio registration for rising 9th graders. Ultimately, we will see a 50% increase in enrollment in Scholars Programming, and enrollment will continue to match division demographics.

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Improving Family Engagement

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• Matching needs assessment w/ school goals

• Liaison between school-home
• School expectations
• Family needs
• Assisting families to support at home
• Attendance
• Barriers to education

• Be aware of community partners
• Connecting resources to families & schools
• Expand community partnerships**

Ballmer Group invests $165 million to expand Communities In Schools.

“With schools being asked to do more than ever, CIS has demonstrated how important it is to have dedicated staff helping students and families gain access to high-quality resources that meet pressing needs in real time and help overcome barriers to learning in the classroom,” said Steve Ballmer.

Insights from Spring 2024 Family Feedback Surveys

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Use Text to Connect

Improve Family Conferences

Inform with Teacher Newsletters

Increase family volunteering and networking

Building a School Community:

Family Connections

• “Have social activities involving all classes, trips, picnics, lunch or dinner, book reading, movies, with some attended only by the families of that class, to enable better integration between class parents and students. As a family coming from a different culture, unfortunately we were not able to socialize with other class parents.”
• “Workshops and Seminars: Offer workshops on topics such as helping with homework, understanding the curriculum, and child development.”
• Translated from Spanish: “Activities for parents to get to know one another and have conversations.”

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Building a School Community:

Volunteering

• Translated from Spanish: “More invitations from teachers on how parents can help with activities in the class.”
• “More frequent emails with school updates and opportunities to get involved. I have never been invited to help in my child's classroom and would be happy to.”
• “Grade level parent representatives to make each grade feel more cohesive and to plan more grade level events outside of school hours. There is an area for growth to increase family connectedness. These individuals could also help the teachers with furthering priorities.”

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Family Feedback: Greer Elementary

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• Response rates to the family feedback survey were low, indicating the need for new channels of communication to families.
• Families who did respond indicated a desire for more enrichment options for families, consistent use of text messaging to connect with families, and more information on how to support children at home who need extra help.

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Family Feedback: Red Hill Elementary

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• Response rates to the family feedback survey were low, indicating the need for new channels of communication to families.
• Families who did respond indicated concerns about how best to schedule conferences with teachers.

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Family Feedback: Journey Middle

• Families had positive feedback on communication from administrators and the school newsletter, however wanted more consistent communication from classroom teachers, feeling as though they did not know what was happening in the classroom, how their student was doing, or how they could support their learning.
• Several families cited concerns about a relatively small number of students in the school having a significant impact on the learning environment due to repeated behavior issues.
• Several families cited concerns about difficulty in signing up for teacher conferences and not having enough time to have a discussion with teachers during them.

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Family Feedback: Albemarle High

• Families expressed a desire for more opportunities to connect with other families at the school, either through grade level events, viewing student projects, attending a learning session about supporting their children, learning English, or just having fellowship with other families in a setting smaller than Open House or Back to School.
• Several families expressed concerns about counselors not responding to emails and feeling their child did not get support for career and college transition that they needed.
• Families preferred more time with teachers for conferences.
• Several families expressed concern for student behavior issues impacting the learning and safety of other students in the school, and they would prefer clearer consequences for this behavior.
• Families cited too much access to technology and reliance on technology in classes and would like stricter enforcement of the cell phone policy and less use of laptops for in-class assignments.

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