Family, School, and Community Partnerships�Coffee Chat

December 12, 2025

Welcome and Introductions

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Office of Family, School, and Community Partnerships

Systemic

Support

Structure

Coordinate family engagement across the Colorado Department of Education

Work with district-level staff to support their unique needs

Staff the State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Education (SACPIE)

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FSCP Coffee Chats

Coffee Chats:

• 10 years and counting!
• Specific for district points of contact
• Opportunity to learn from each other
• Highlights promising practices
• Creates a community of collaboration

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Logistics:

• Meets monthly August-May
• Third Friday of the month (mostly)
• Most virtual, some hybrid
• Problem of Practice during virtual chats

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Office of Family, School, and Community Partnerships 2025-2026 Theme

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FSCP Trail Map

FSCP Trail Map for Schools

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Colorado’s P-12 FSCP Framework

Essential Element Three: Design Capacity-Building Opportunities

Capacity building opportunities for staff and families promote shared leadership about educational outcomes for children and youth.

Guiding Questions:

1. How do you use the context expertise of families to better your content expertise?
2. How are you utilizing the assets of your families in your programs/schools?
3. How do you using FSCP as a school improvement strategy?

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Small Group Introductions

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Designing Capacity-Building Opportunities in D11

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DESIGNING CAPACITY BUILDING OPPORTUNITIES

MISSION: Working side by side with students, D11's design thinking labs harness diverse perspectives, nurture new ideas, iterate, and use design thinking to drive improved educational outcomes for all students.

DESIGN THINKING LABS

D11 Design Lab Design Principles:

Empathize: Do with and not for! The people closest to the work are closest to the solution. Seek to deeply understand their perspectives.

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Iterate, Iterate, Iterate: Refine relentlessly! Bias toward action. Failure is feedback and leads to growth.

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Build Trust: Change is collaborative! Embrace and invite vulnerability. Shed positional authority and harness the power of diverse perspectives.

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Center Learners: Nothing for us, without us! Empower students and be an ally for action. 

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Embrace Ambiguity: Uncertainty = Opportunity! Navigate the work  with curiosity and creativity.

Last year, D11's FSCP Collaborative utilized the design thinking process to develop its service model.

Small Group Activity - Crazy 8s

• The problem: Families rarely read school and classroom newsletters or emails.
• In your small group, come up with 8 solutions to the problem.
• You will have 8 minutes.
• Think creatively!
• After 8 minutes, you’ll share with the whole group your “winningest” idea.

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BLACK BELT

A Black Belt is a leader in continuous improvement. They help teams understand problems clearly, design better processes, and deliver measurable results for the organization. They also guide the change process—helping staff adapt, building buy-in, and ensuring that new practices are implemented smoothly and sustainably. In K–12 education, this means strengthening the systems that support students, families, and staff—so schools can spend less time navigating inefficiencies and more time focused on teaching and learning.

In 2011, Mayor Michael B. Hancock created the Peak program to increase taxpayers’ return on their investment in city government. The program was designed to provide frontline employees with the tools to make data driven decisions and improve their own work.

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• About Peak
• Peak Academy Trainings
• Resources

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Black Belt training provides participants with a variety of tools to drive improvements. Some tools help identify roles and responsibilities; others identify bottlenecks; and others support gap or root cause analysis.

Process Mapping

Gemba Walk

Spaghetti Diagram

Communication Circle

Plus/Delta

Fishbone Diagram

5 Why’s

OVERVIEW: The 5 Whys is a gap analysis tool that uses question-asking techniques to identify the root cause. Failure to determine the root cause will result in treating the problem's symptoms rather than its cause, in which case the problem will return.

HOW TO USE IT: The 5 Whys is most effectively used as a conversational tool. When a problem is identified, begin asking the question "Why?" to dig deeper into the root cause. Ask as many or as few whys as you need to get to the root cause of the problem. You've reached the root cause when you can no longer answer the question "Why?" or when you feel the following answer would result in a solution.

Test the Logic: Use the word “therefore” to read backwards through each question: “I’m not servicing my car on time; therefore, I didn’t replace the alternator belt..”

Small Group Activity - 5 Whys

• The problem: Teachers are reluctant to make positive phone calls home.
• In your small group, come up with 5 Whys, digging deeper and deeper into the root cause.
• You will have ___ minutes.
• After ___ minutes, you’ll read to the whole group your questions backwards, using “therefore…”

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Director of Partnerships

Colorado Springs School District 11

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Lauren.mason@d11.org

719-520-2203

LAUREN MASON

Connect with Us!

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Thank you!�Office of FSCP Website