Developing Community-Empowered Schools

Developing Community-Empowered Schools presents an effective approach to the implementation of successful school, family, and community partnership activities. Mary Ann Burke and Lawrence Picus draw on over 20 years of experience in working with schools to increase parent and community involvement. They strongly believe that by empowering stakeholders at each school site, better decisions about educational programmes will result, thereby improving learning for all students. They: examine the components of a community-empowered school; identify the stakeholders in a school; define the roles of each stakeholder, describing what each group can do to help the school reach its academic and resource goals; suggest policies and procedures that support school and community relationships; demonstrate how to seek funding to sustain a school-based community programme; explain how using the community as a school resource can provide a cost-effective solution to school finance; illustrate how the community benefits, socially and economically, from a school-community partnership; Resources and materials are also provided - sufficient to support a one-day teacher-training workshop on the utilization of parents and community tutors or mentors in the classroom - including overhead transparencies, training worksheets, and sample memos from teachers to students' families.

Table of Contents:
Introduction What Is a Community-Empowered School? Who Are the Stakeholders? Policies and Procedures That Support School and Community Partnerships How to Empower and Train Staff for Effective School and Community Partnerships Volunteer Strategies to Support Literary Activities Building Community Collaborations for Added Resources Schools as Economic Solutions to Communities The Future of Community-Empowered Schools

About the Author :
Mary Ann Burke is the co-founder of the Generational Parenting Blog at genparenting.com. Dr. Burke presents effective parenting and school engagement strategies at numerous state and national parent engagement events. She creates Common Core State Standards kits and S.T.E.A.M. activities for parents to use at home and in their child’s classroom to support children’s literacy and academic readiness skills. Dr. Burke is an author or editor of four Corwin Press Books on parent and community engagement in schools. Mary Ann is an active grandmother of five grandchildren that include seven month old twin granddaughters, a four year old preschool grandson, a six-year-old kindergarten granddaughter, and a nine year old third grade grandson. She supports her grandchildren’s literacy and academic development activity play at home and at their schools. Mary Ann is a credentialed parent educator for over thirty years in California’s schools and a former adjunct professor. Dr. Burke previously led the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Parent Engagement Initiative that is a state model for best practices in parent engagement for culturally diverse families. Lawrence O. Picus is professor of education finance and policy at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. His current research interests focus on adequacy and equity in school finance as well as efficiency and productivity in the provision of educational programs for K-12 school children. Picus is past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and is the president of the board of EdSource, a California-based education research organization. Picus is the coauthor of School Finance: A Policy Perspective (5th edition) with Allan R. Odden. He has authored, coauthored, or edited several other books including Where Does the Money Go? Resource Allocation in Elementary and Secondary Schools (1995), In Search of More Productive Schools: A Guide to Resource Allocation in Education (2001), Developing Community-Empowered Schools (2001) coauthored with Mary Ann Burke, and Principles of School Business Administration (1995) with R. Craig Wood, David Thompson, and Don I. Tharpe. He has also published numerous articles in professional journals. Picus studies how educational resources are allocated and used in schools across the United States. He has conducted studies of the impact of incentives on school district performance. Picus maintains close contact with the superintendents and chief business officers of school districts throughout California and the nation and is a member of a number of professional organizations dedicated to improving school district management. He is a former member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Association of School Business Officials International, and he has served as a consultant to the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, the National Center for Education Statistics, and WestEd. He served as the principal consultant for the design of school funding systems in Wyoming and Arkansas and has conducted equity, adequacy, and resource allocation studies in Arizona, Arkansas, Washington, Vermont, Oregon, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, Nebraska, Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Maine. Picus holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Reed College and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He received his PhD in public policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School. 

Review :
"A how-to manual for educators who want to increase community involvement in their schools. The book explains the steps for creating such a (community-empowered) school. It is filled with sample worksheets, checklists, and an entire section on how to train educational staff and volunteers."