Abingdon School-Family Partnership Principles

To ensure that all students in Abingdon Elementary School improve achievement and meet state and local standards, a partnership between school and family is essential. Our school believes in the shared responsibility of families and school staff for supporting students’ intellectual, personal, social, and emotional development to help them reach their full potential. Families are significant stakeholders who engage in their child’s education as much as possible, and the school is committed to working with families in the following ways.

Families feel welcomed, valued, and connected to each other and the school.

• Create a family-friendly, respectful, and helpful school climate.

• Physical spaces create a welcoming environment and encourage connections among families.
• Offer flexible opportunities for input and engagement, such as varied meeting times and online and in-person options and remove barriers to family participation by providing services such as language translation, transportation, and childcare that facilitate family engagement, as necessary and practicable.

Parents are full partners in the decisions that affect children and families.

• Establish a Building Advisory Committee (BAC), which will assist staff in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the schoolwide program and family engagement guidelines at the school.
• Hold an annual family engagement meeting to review the Title I schoolwide program and family engagement guidelines and inform students’ families about ESSA regulations.
• Invite and consider parent input regarding the schoolwide plan and school-family partnership principles.
• Coordinate with districtwide efforts through APS Engage to seek family input in the annual revision of the APS Handbook and accompanying Acknowledgement, which describes the roles and responsibilities of staff, parents, and students in striving for academic success.

Communication between home and school is regular, two-way, and meaningful.

• Provide timely information about school year plans through various methods and languages to encourage family engagement.
• Share these school-family partnership principles on the school website.
• Report student progress quarterly on district report cards and offer opportunities for dialogue in parent-teacher conferences.
• Inform families of services provided, using multiple methods of communication.
• Inform families about APS curricula, the Virginia Standards of Learning, and state and local assessments and benchmarks, and assist families in understanding them.
• Welcome and invite families’ voices in decision-making processes that affect children by creating opportunities for open dialogue.

Sharing resources and information is promoted and supported to help reinforce student learning at home.

• Provide opportunities for families to learn how to support their children in demonstrating that school is an important priority within the family.
• Provide services of trained staff to coordinate and support the development of strong, sustained family engagement programs that encourage families to participate in the education of their children.
• Help families provide support for their child’s learning, such as skill practice activities and games linked to school learning.
• Build the capacity of teachers, families and school staff to work together through school-wide integration of strategies that promote genuine partnerships. At the school this year, we will engage in these activities:

• School Year 2023-2024 School Family Calendar (English)

Family and community volunteers are welcome in the school, and their support and assistance are sought.

• Encourage family participation in school.
• Seek opportunities to utilize community resources to strengthen school, family, and student learning.
• Collaborate with other federal and state programs in the school such as Head Start, Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI), and Montessori to coordinate transitioning to kindergarten.

APS Policy I-11.1 Family and Community Engagement APS Policy Implementation Procedure (PIP) I-11.1 PIP-1 Family and Community Engagement APS FACE Policy and PIP At A Glance VDOE Sample School Parent and Family Engagement Policy Title-I Section 1118 (b) School Parental Involvement Policy