FR2004 Assessment Task Force Report

FR2004 Assessment Task Force Report 1 

The Morningside Community Preschool

Family and Community Engagement

Task Force Report

Introduction

The Morningside Community Preschool (MCP) is housed on the bottom floor of a large Downtown business in a medium-sized city. The center’s preschool program operates from 8am – 2pm, Monday through Friday. Before- and after-school care is available. Many children are brought to MCP from the suburbs by family members who work Downtown. Other children come from nearby neighborhoods that are close to the University, and are from both faculty and student families. The University attracts faculty and students from many places around the world. Approximately one-fifth of the children are on full or partial scholarships, and most live in one of two housing developments.

The preschool has four classrooms of 4-year-olds (56) and four classrooms of 3-year-olds (48). Each classroom has a Lead Teacher and an Assistant Teacher. Additional, staff provide care before and after the program day.

The Family and Community Engagement Task Force was established by the Director of Morningside Community Preschool amid growing concerns about a lack of interaction between the program, the families whose children attend the school, and the wider community. Program open houses have been poorly attended, and the relationships between staff members and families have been tenuous. In addition, when MCP faculty went into the community to seek raffle donations from local businesses, they discovered that many did not even know of the preschool’s existence.

Next Steps

After sharing these insights and concerns with the Board of Directors, the Morningside Family and Community Engagement Task Force was established to address these and other issues. Comprised of the director, staff, family members, and local community leaders, the Morningside Family and Community Engagement Task Force has decided to identify research-based strategies to:

1) Engage more families in partnering with the school to foster children’s healthy development and learning.

2) Build meaningful relationships with the community to promote positive outcomes for children and families.

Task Force Vision Statement

The members of the Family and Community Engagement Task Force share a common vision: Children are best cared for when the adults in their lives engage in consistent dialogue. We have come together to draw on and utilize research-based strategies for better engaging families we serve and members of our community. The Task Force will present a series of recommendations for specific actions to the Board of Directors as well as rationales for these recommendations and the sources relied on to arrive at them.

Task Force Recommendations

To Promote Family Engagement

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research-based strategies to engage more families in partnering with our school to foster children’s healthy development and learning:

Explain five research-based strategies for engaging families in partnering with our school to foster children’s healthy development and learning. (2-3 sentences each)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Why we chose these strategies:

Explain the rationale for choosing these particular strategies, including research-based evidence showing why these strategies can be effective in engaging families in school efforts to foster children’s healthy development and learning. (1-2 paragraphs).

Sources:

Provide at least two citations with URLs that were the sources for the chosen strategies.

1.

2.