Pre-Kindergarten Family Engagement Plan
The family engagement plan includes the following six components outlined in House Bill 4 High Quality prekindergarten grant established under Subsection (b).
I. Facilitate family-to-family support
- Create a safe and respectful environment where families can learn from each other as individuals and in groups.
II. Establish a network of community resources
- Establish and maintain partnerships with businesses, faith-based organizations, and community agencies.
- Communicate short and long term program goals to all stakeholders.
- Identify partners to provide translators and culturally relevant resources reflective of home language.
- Identify and inform families of community programs such as mentoring, tutoring, and business partnerships.
III. Increase family participation in decision making
- Develop, adopt and implement identified goals within the district improvement plan targeting family engagement.
- Use appropriate tools such as surveys or focus groups to gather family feedback on the family engagement plan.
IV. Equip families with tools to enhance and extend learning
- Provide complementary home learning activities for families to engage in at home with children through information presented in newsletters, online technology, social media, parent/family-teacher conferences, or other school or center-related events (Advantage Academy utilizes My Teaching Strategies as part of the Texas Covid Recovery Instructional Support Initiative brought to us through Texas Home Learning 4.0 (CRIMSI)).
- Utilize Seesaw Learning Management System in addition to the Remind application to communicate parent activities.
- Collaborate with families to appropriately respond to children’s behavior in a non-punitive, positive, and supportive way.
- Assist families to implement best practices that will help achieve the goals and objectives identified to meet the needs of the child and family.
- Utilize student progress monitoring reports provided by Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) Engage to communicate individual learning goals and activities with families to work collaboratively promote educational growth and development.
V. Develop staff skills in evidence-based practices that support families in meeting their children’s learning benchmarks
- Promote and develop family engagement as a core strategy to improve teaching and learning among all educators and staff.
- Develop staff skills to support and use culturally diverse, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive family engagement strategies.
- Promote and develop family literacy through Fall and Spring book initiatives.
VI. Evaluate family engagement efforts and use evaluations for continuous improvement
- Use data to ensure alignment between family engagement activities and district teaching and learning goals and to promote continuous family engagement.
- Ensure teachers play a role in the family engagement evaluation process.