Jill's Seven Steps for Success
Restore Trust and Public Confidence with Parents and Community Members.
- Deliver honest and accurate information to parents and the public.
- Ensure our schools are safe, offer rigorous academic opportunities, and are dependable partners in our community.
- Promote and Inform communities about our academic successes
- Aggressively and Visibly Respond to challenges.
- Effective management of funds and resources to maximize academic success.
Ensure that All Children and All Communities have access to schools in their community that offer equitable well-rounded academic opportunities.
- Invest in academic approaches that are sustainable and ensure that the schools have the resources and support necessary to promote academic success.
- Build “pathways” or academic connections between schools so that our schools support one another’s educational efforts.
- Design school information so that parents can easily understand available educational options and can create an “educational roadmap” for their child from preschool to life after high school.
- Increase the access and availability to successful academic approaches (ex: International Baccalaureate),educational resources (ex. Science materials or up-to-date technology) and enrichment programs (world languages, music, performing and fine arts, gifted and talented opportunities, and special education programs).
- Focus resources on proven academic approaches.
Invest in Early Childhood and Aggressively Act to Reduce the Achievement Gap.
- Build more bridges between early childhood programs and our elementary schools. Increase our involvement in partnerships that promote quality early childhood experiences across the city.
- Collaborate with leaders, elders, community members, and entities with expertise within African American and Native American Communities in Minneapolis to design and implement culturally effective academic approaches and positive learning environments for our African American and Native American children.
- Increase the number and the diversity of adults who work directly with children.
- Focus on all children developing foundational educational skills (reading, writing, and math) and pro-social relationship skills by age 8.
- Prioritize smaller class sizes for the K-2 grades, students with special education needs, schools with a high percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, and schools with a high percentage of English Language Learners.
Respect and Embrace the Diverse Cultures of Students and Families.
- Ensure that every employee in our district becomes culturally competent (knowledge, skills, and behaviors).
- Implement policies, practices, and training to address racism/discrimination (intentional or unintentional) that exist in our school system.
- Expand the availability of multi-lingual adults in our schools (either through employment, volunteer support, or programs such as Americorps)
- Increase and support staff’s opportunities to learn other languages and target bi-lingual staff presence and availability in “front-line” situations: every school’s main office, parent liaison positions, and parent meetings.
- Ensure that our academic approaches, educational materials, parent and community engagement practices, and outreach efforts are culturally respectful and responsive.
- Plan for diversity. All of our academic efforts, meetings with parents, and outreach and community activities should be designed from a multi-lingual, multi-cultural perspective.
Invite, Include, and Welcome Parents and Concerned Others to be key partners in their child’ education and a valued member of their child’s school community.
- Implement practices consistently in every school that support parents feeling welcomed, keeps them well-informed regarding their child’s academic progress, and gives parents many options to be involved in their child’s school community.
- Collect parent satisfaction information every school year to define behaviors that promote parents feeling welcomed and included as equal partners in their child’s education. Work with parent advisory groups, PTA’s, PTO’s to develop parent friendly practices.
- Inform communities about what’s going on in Minneapolis Public Schools and about their successes through neighborhood publications, school web sites and other media venues.
- Provide opportunities for parents, mentors, and community members to learn specific strategies to support a child academic success and to gain knowledge about parent practices that support healthy child development.
Strengthen the Organizational and Leadership Structure to Support Policies, Practices, and People that are Proactive, Effective, Responsive, and Respectful.
- Implement accountability measures at every level of our district that produce and promote successful academic outcomes.
- Promote an organizational climate that encourages and supports collaboration and respect between departments, schools, teachers, parents, and partners. Eliminate unproductive and divisive policies and practices which promote competition between MPS schools and within the organization.
- Develop an operating framework that focuses our energies on growth and opportunities from one of downsizing and entrenchment.
- Utilize 21st Century technology to enhance teaching and learning, to improve communication and parent engagement, and to increase our ability to collect data so we can be responsive to enrollment trends and academic performance information.
Increase Resources and Investment for our Schools through Public Advocacy, Strong Community Connections and Partnerships with key Stakeholders.
- Strongly encourage every school to be part of the fabric of the community in which it is located. School staff and children should be visible and active in neighborhoods such as community service projects, school performances at local events, or staff participation in a citizens community council
- Develop a “Strategic Plan for Partnerships”. Develop a Partnership Catalog so we have a clear understanding of the nature and number of our partnerships. Monitor where our partnership needs are for specific schools, targeted groups of children, or for unmet needs for families or children. Create connections to meet identified needs.
- Co-locate services and/or programs that address issues that impact a child’s “readiness” to learn such as family support services, financial and housing support, mental health agencies, and culturally specific support organizations.
- Aggressively Advocate and collaborate with others to obtain Funding and Resources that address the real cost of providing quality public education.