The School-to-Home-to-Community Connection: Engaging Families and Community in Appalachia to Improve Student Outcomes

Format

Individual Presentation

First Presenter's Institution

Lumpkin County School System

First Presenter’s Email Address

rob.brown@lumpkinschools.com

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Dr. Rob Brown is a native of Marietta, Georgia and a graduate of Sprayberry High School in Cobb County. He attended Carson-Newman College where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Physical Education & Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. He later earned a Master’s Degree and an Educational Specialist degree in Educational Leadership from Jacksonville State University and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Alabama. Dr. Brown has served in public education for 25 years; jobs have included teacher, coach, assistant principal, principal, executive director of secondary schools, and superintendent. After serving as superintendent for 4 years in Jeff Davis County, Brown is currently serving in his 6th year as superintendent for Lumpkin County Schools. Dr. Brown is a recognized leader within his professional organizations. In addition to having been appointed to serve on numerous state committees, he is currently serving as the President for the Georgia School Superintendent’s Association, the Board Chair for the Pioneer RESA Board of Control and the Board Chair the Cooperative Purchasing Agency. During his career, Dr. Brown has presented at numerous state and national conferences on a variety of educational issues. The Georgia School Boards Association Conference, the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders Conference, the Georgia Charter System Foundation Conference, the National Youth At-Risk Conference, the National Dropout Prevention Conference, and the National Alternative Education Conference have included Dr. Brown’s presentations through the years. Schools and school systems under Dr. Brown’s leadership have been identified as some of the best in the state and country. Awards including a National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Lighthouse School, a Georgia School Boards Association State Finalist for the Governance Team of the Year, multiple GSBA Leading Edge Awards, the Georgia Charter System Leadership Development Award, Georgia School Public Relations Gold Award, and the GASPA Best in Class for Teacher Retention Award have been received under Dr. Brown’s leadership. In addition to his professional role, Brown is an active community leader. While living and working in multiple Georgia cities, he has served as Rotary Club President, Kiwanis Club President, Hospital Board Chairman, volunteer youth coach, and remains active as on several community boards. Dr. Brown and his wife Betsy, also an educator, have been married for 22 years. They have a 20-year old son, Keller, who is a student at the University of North Georgia.

Second Presenter's Institution

Lumpkin County School System

Second Presenter’s Email Address

jason.lemley@lumpkinschools.com

Second Presenter's Brief Biography

Jason D. Lemley is a product of Dahlonega, Georgia and the Lumpkin County School System. Having attended the school system in which he works from kindergarten through high school graduation, Mr. Lemley went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in English Education from the University of Georgia. Throughout his professional career as an educator, Lemley attended the University of North Georgia (formerly North Georgia College & State University) receiving both his Master’s Degree in English and an Educational Specialist degree in School Leadership. Today, Mr. Lemley is in his second year as a doctoral student at the University of Alabama studying Educational Administration and Policy with an expected graduation date of December 2023. With a one-year stint as a high school math teacher to kick off his career, Mr. Lemley’s fourteen years as an educator have all be in the Lumpkin County School System. Having taught high school English for six years (2008-2014), served as advisor for numerous extra-curricular organizations, and spent his last four years teaching English in a half-time assistant administrator (AA) / half-time teacher role, Lemley was named as an assistant principal of Lumpkin County High School in 2014. In 2017, in his fourth year as a high school AP, Mr. Lemley was named CTAE Director for which he still serves for Lumpkin County Schools. For the past three years, Lemley added Public Relations Coordinator for the district to his administrative duties while finishing out his last three years as an assistant principal. In June 2021, Mr. Lemley was named the Director of Public Relations and Community Engagement for the LCSS. As a life-long and career native of Dahlonega/Lumpkin County, Mr. Lemley’s current position is a natural fit for his community ties and professional strengths. Jason Lemley serves in numerous leadership roles outside the school system having chaired Relay For Life of Lumpkin County, the Lumpkin County Literacy Coalition and served as an executive officer for the Dahlonega/Lumpkin County Kiwanis Club. As the Director of Community Engagement, he works alongside our community’s businesses, industry, workforce development, and chamber of commerce to ensure Lumpkin County students are graduating successful and productive citizens in our ever-changing world. As a member of ACTE, GACTE, PAGE, GSPRA, NSPRA, GAEL, and GASSP, Mr. Lemley continues to enhance his professional knowledge by attending conferences and networking with his peers across the state and nation. He currently serves as the Region 2 Director for the Georgia School Public Relations Association. Since becoming an administrator, Lemley has presented at both regional, state, and national conferences. His presentations on a variety of educational topics and innovative practices have been featured at numerous workshops with Pioneer RESA, at the Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA) Conference, the Georgia Charter System Foundation Conference, the ACTE Best Practices Conference, the Georgia Educational Leadership Institute (GELI) Conference, the Georgia Association of Career Technical Education (GACTE) Conference, and the Georgia Association of Secondary School Principals (GASSP) Conference. Under his leadership, Lumpkin County Schools received numerous awards and recognitions in the areas of communications and public relations. Awards include the Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA) Leading Edge Award for Communications and a Gold Award from the Georgia School Public Relations Association. Jason and his wife, Ashley, live in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia, with their three children, Malaya, Everett, and Jett. Ashley is a Spanish teacher currently staying home for a couple years after teaching in Lumpkin and Gwinnett Counties for 13 years. Malaya is a high school junior at Lumpkin County High School, while Everett is a fourth grader and Jett a first grader at Mt. Yonah Elementary School in White County.

Location

Session Six Breakouts

Strand #1

Home: Family & Community Engagement

Strand #2

Head: Academic Achievement & Leadership

Relevance

On the southernmost border of Appalachia exists the Lumpkin County School System, with its five schools and nearly 4,000 students. Dahlonega, the county seat, is the site of the first Gold Rush in 1828 and is home to the University of North Georgia, a great educational partner with the school system. The surrounding county of Lumpkin offers rich resources in cultural arts experiences, festivals, outdoor and recreational activities such as camping, hiking, biking, and varied historical attractions. As a school system nestled in this unique setting, the Lumpkin County School System is committed to working closely with the community to educate and empower its students in becoming life-long learners in an ever-changing world. To accomplish their mission and vision, the school system aims to hire, cultivate, and retain the most qualified, effective, and dynamic educators (leaders, teachers, and paraprofessionals); to ensure that all students learn in effective standards-based classrooms; to provide good stewardship of their human, financial, and material resources; and to forge strong and constructive ties between the schools, the homes and the community.

It’s the latter of those aims that continues to present a gap in the academic success of the students, and the economic success of the families and the community at large. What do “strong and constructive ties between the schools, the homes and the community” entail, and how does strengthening the school-to-home connection translate to success? In Lumpkin County Schools, there exists a large disparity between both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum—the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ With its rich natural resources, beautiful landscapes, and ever-increasing property values, affluent families are attracted to Dahlonega and Lumpkin County. Its these transplant families and students who are out-performing the generational families and students who live at or below the poverty line.

Families with the means to provide needed and additional resources at home to ensure student success at school and parents who are actively engaged in their child(ren)’s day-to-day education were outperforming families and students without those same levels of engagement.

As a part of the Lumpkin County Schools strategic planning process first developed in 2016, the over 1100 stakeholders involved in providing relevant and important feedback on the current status of family, parent and community engagement, an in-depth review of the district’s current objectives, initiatives, and action steps for parent and community engagement, review of research and evolving best practices related to family and community engagement around the country, and Superintendent Brown’s and Director of Public Relations and Community Engagement Lemley’s call to action to focus on developing learning-focused family and parent partnerships in the improved LCSS Strategic Plan for 2021-2026, Lumpkin County Schools embraces family and parent engagement as a core value and embedded strategy of our district to positively impact students’ outcomes, motivation, and behavior.

Brief Program Description

As a school district in rural north Georgia, Lumpkin County Schools recognizes as a basic premise that parents and families are children’s first teachers, that our community is integral to the success of our students, that both family and community are essential partners in the education process, and that the success of students in Lumpkin County is a shared interest of the school, the family, and the community. With this belief, we are #FocusedForward as we leverage our families and our community to positively impact student outcomes!

Summary

If family and community engagement is a shared responsibility between all adults in and beyond school, and if those adults are committed to building and enhancing their skills, knowledge, and mindsets related to engagement, and if schools, families and community engage in productive, mutually respective partnerships, then family and community engagement will be a meaningful contributor to increased student performance and outcomes, greater overall social-emotional wellness, improved schools, and students who are prepared for post-secondary education and participation in a global economy.

With four distinct levels (level zero to level four) to the family and parent engagement plan, district and school administrators should use these proposed strategies in developing the action steps necessary to achieve the desired results.

Level Zero (Background): Teachers understand barrier to parent involvement and engagement, and teachers understand and see value in community engagement in education.

Þ Determine the family structure.

Þ Eliminate barriers to engagement caused by generational poverty (transportation, time, access to resources, lack of knowledge and skills, parents’ educational background).

Þ Ensure that school events and activities are accessible to families (time and place).

Þ Support staff with training on how to work with families.

Þ Support staff with external opportunities to engage with business and industry.

Level One (Communication): Parents are informed of children’s learning and community members are informed of the district's strategic initiatives.

Þ Communicate with families and community in multiple ways (text, call, social media, printed materials, meetings, outreach events).

Level Two (Involvement): Parents are involved in their child’s school life and Community is involved in the schools.

Þ Collaborate with families and community on involvement.

Þ Provide opportunities that result in meaningful involvement for both family and community.

Level Three (Engagement): Parents and community are engaged to impact child’s future.

Þ Design assignments, activities, and lessons that integrate the knowledge of parents and community members.

Þ Offer opportunities for families to develop specific skills using community members as a resource.

Level Four (Partnership): Parents and community are partners in the schools and the district.

Þ Establish ways to increase relationships, cultivate trust, and build family and community partnerships.

Evidence

Many schools focus on parent involvement, or the idea of parents and families “participating in something.” However, involvement is not the same as engagement. Rather, engagement is the action of “participating by doing with.” Engagement is developing active, engaged partnerships with parents and families, not just involving parents and families by inviting them to attend activities and meetings. In 2012, a research study performed by North Carolina State University found that parent involvement, or “engagement” as the term has evolved in the last four or five years, is more important than schools to academic achievement and student success. It is the schools, then, that must inform parents of the potential of their influence and the schools that must develop valuable parent engagement strategies to positively impact the academic achievement of its students. No matter the program, the intervention, or the best-practice strategy utilized, if home support is connected to student learning, there is a connection to higher student achievement: “When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tent to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more” (Henderson and Mapp, 2002, p. 7).

Teachers must understand the goals that parents have for their children, how parents support their children, and how parents themselves would like to be engaged in their children’s learning. Likewise, parents must become familiar with the educational programs and what is required of students from the school (Epstein and Sanders, 2000). The burden of family and parent engagement is on the school, however. It is important for the school to focus on their role in engaging parents as their role should be one that considers how to establish, and more importantly how to maintain, high-quality teacher and parent interaction (Hughes and Kwok, 2007). In order to positively impact student achievement, effective parental engagement must be intentionally cultivated, resulting in partnerships that benefit the students’ learning (Epstein and Sanders, 2000).

References

Epstein, J. L. and Sanders, M. G. (2000). Connecting home, school, and community: New directions for social research. Handbook of the Sociology of Education. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

Henderson, A. T. and Mapp, K. L. (2002). A new wave of evidence: The impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.

Hughes, J. and Kowk, O. (2007). Influence of student-teacher and parent-teacher relationships on lower achieving readers’ engagement and achievement in the primary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(1), 39-51.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will be able to identify their particular district's barriers to family and community engagement.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will be able to strategize best practices for increasing family and community engagement.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will be able to design appropriate objectives, initiatives, and action steps in addressing the particular barriers to family and community engagement for their school system.

Keyword Descriptors

engagement, involvement, family, parent, community, outcomes, achievement, poverty, communication, collaboration

Presentation Year

2022

Start Date

3-8-2022 1:00 PM

End Date

3-8-2022 2:15 PM

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Mar 8th, 1:00 PM Mar 8th, 2:15 PM

The School-to-Home-to-Community Connection: Engaging Families and Community in Appalachia to Improve Student Outcomes

Session Six Breakouts

As a school district in rural north Georgia, Lumpkin County Schools recognizes as a basic premise that parents and families are children’s first teachers, that our community is integral to the success of our students, that both family and community are essential partners in the education process, and that the success of students in Lumpkin County is a shared interest of the school, the family, and the community. With this belief, we are #FocusedForward as we leverage our families and our community to positively impact student outcomes!