Family Engagement and Leadership Initiative (FamELI)

School-Family Partnerships
Research shows that family engagement supports student success in school and beyond. When families are engaged, students have improved rates of homework completion and quality, better attendance and behavior, greater academic achievement, and increased graduation rates.

OSF Family Engagement and Leadership Initiative (FamELI)
OSF’s FamELI Program is a professional learning community of school leaders that convene to share and develop practices for partnering with families in student learning. The Collaborative supports schools to create tools and structures that encourage meaningful partnerships between schools and families; and to develop school-based, school-family partnership programs that support student success. The ultimate objective of FamELI is to build strong cross-school collaboration in family engagement strategies and practices, and to develop effective school-family partnership programs that positively impact student achievement.

Strategies
FamELI focuses on the following key strategies:

• Build effective collaboration across schools to share programs and practices that support school-family partnerships: OSF facilitates a series of Collaborative meetings where Family Resource Center (FRC) staff, principals, and teachers from participating schools share ideas and develop strategies for building partnerships with families to improve student learning. In 2010-11, FamELI hosted fourteen Collaborative sessions, including seven sessions for FRC staff; two sessions for teachers; and five Collaborative sessions for group of school site stakeholders: FRC staff, principals, and teachers.

These meetings provide dedicated space and time for schools to share information, learn from one another, reflect on their current programs and goals, and to specifically engage in the strategic process of building the capacity of their school-family partnership programs. The agenda’s and activities for the meetings are developed according to the existing needs and commonalities of the school sites. Topics include developing the teacher liaison role; building teacher-family relationships; program evaluation; and developing family leadership in schools.

• Support effective, sustainable school-site Family Resource Centers and staff: FamELI supports schools in identifying and securing resources that build strong site based staff and effective Family Resource Centers. Collaborative participants also receive grant funding through OSF to supplement their programs. Grant funds pay for FRC staff, materials, and family workshops.

• Develop tools and strategies that support family participation and leadership in student learning and development: The OSF FamELI Collaborative has designed the FamELI Toolkit, a compilation of tools and resources, to build stronger, more integrated programs at each school site. The toolkit includes FRC staff job descriptions, staff performance evaluation templates, family needs assessments, program surveys, goal-setting worksheets, parent-teacher conference worksheets, , program rubrics, and more.

• Support schools in developing structures to partner with families in the interest of student achievement: In order to develop strong programs that can impact students, the Collaborative has focused over the past two years on supporting schools to develop strong organizational structures. As FamELI has evolved, participating schools have identified and documented structures that support strong connections between schools and families. These structures include staffing models, communication systems, and program evaluation.

The following eleven schools are in the FamELI cohort:
• Acorn Woodland Elementary (K-5)
• ASCEND (K-8)
• Coliseum College Prep Academy (6-12)
• EnCompass Academy (K-5)
• Elmhurst Community Prep (6-8)
• International Community School (K-5)
• Manzanita Community School (K-5)
• Manzanita SEED (K-5)
• Think College Now (K-5)
• United for Success Academy (6-8)
• Urban Promise Academy (6-8)