Community Involvement Resources

Use these resources to gather additional tools and resources for your community involvement efforts.

Volunteer Networks
NetDay

Provides tools and anecdotes of success for involving your community in wiring your schools for the Internet.
TechCorps

A national directory of technology experts volunteering to advise schools and districts on

21st Century Teachers

A national program to develop a network of "teacher experts" to provide professional development for their colleagues.
Volunteer Link

An electronic database of volunteers willing to assist schools with computer installation, networking, software, web design, troubleshooting and training.
Project Appleseed The National Campaign for Public School Improvement

A national campaign to garner community support for and involvement in our nation's schools.

Partnerships
The 1986 National Alliance of Business Education Improvement Project stated that the chances of success for a school-business partnership are greater if the following conditions exist:
  • Partners agree about the nature of the problems and share common vision for the future.
  • Businesses and schools already have a history of working together.
  • Partners use an organized structure to coordinate the efforts of the partnership.
  • Partnership have the involvement of top leaders from business and education.
  • Partners focus on short-term goals but commit to sustained, long-term relationships.
  • Goals are clearly designed and measurable.
Read T.H.E. Journal, October 1996 issue featuring several articles on the powerful possibilities offered by partnering with community organizations, local universities, the business sector and others as a means of garnering community support for your district.
Common Knowledge Pittsburgh

Learn how the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Carnegie Library, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hill House Association (a community center), the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the University of Pittsburgh and other organizations partnered to bring technology and networking to Pittsburgh City Schools.
Prophets Project at Century High School in Santa Ana, CA

Read how student teams worked in partnership with non-profit groups who needed a Web site built or video-conference created. Students received telementoring via video-conferencing and created the web site, learning about the social or environmental issues involved in the non-profit groups' work.

General Community Involvement Resources
TalkCity Education Center

A site where parents, students, and educators can share ideas about and insights into education. Features online chats for real-time exchange.
National School Network

Provides the tools, information, services, technology and support for a national network of learning communities. Read, for example, about the Science Learning Network, a collaboration of six schools, six museums, and a corporate partner, Unisys.
The Florida Business and Education Coalition for Technology and Change is working for the improvement of their communities through collaboration.
The "Dynamics of Alliances" is a report from the Mid-Central Regional Educational Laboratory that provides a rationale for developing broad-based alliances to organize and sustain community involvement and to describe the factors that influence the likelihood for a successful alliance.
The Family and Community Involvement section of the Mid-Central Regional Educational Laboratory's site offers a list of and connections to family and community involvement resources.
The Community Partnerships section of the Southwest Regional Educational Laboratory's site provides frameworks for and research on successful school-community partnerships.
"Keeping the Faith Until the Outcomes Are Obvious" is an article by Sharon F. Rallis and Nancy C. Zajano, published in the Phi Delta Kappan, that tells how to maintain the support of various stakeholders during the trial and error stage of change implementation.
"Fostering Resilience and Learning Success in Schools: The Learning City Program" is a report by Margaret Wang (Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory) telling of the collaboration between schools, the community and local organizations to improve student learning in an urban setting.
"Community Connection with Education: A Macro-ecology of Education Outcomes" is a report by David Bartlett of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory examining how changes in urban economic, residential and fiscal conditions affect schools.
"School-University Partnership: Restructuring and Urban School" Andrea Zetlin (Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory)
"Community Support Systems" (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory) focuses on the critical issues of community involvement and how to address them.
"Establishing Collaboratives and Partnerships" (NCREL) provides guidelines and tools for doing so.
"School-Community Collaboration" (NCREL) outlines the issues, promising practices, emerging reforms and resources related to collaboration.

 

In this Module:

Community Support for Change Community Support for Tech Community Involvement Resources

In the Toolkit:

Toolkit Home Page Why Change? Why Technology?
Planning Policy Curriculum and Assessment
Community Involvement Facility Planning Funding
Prof'l and Ldrship Development