YDEKC

Best Starts for Kids School and Community Partnerships Cohort: Are you a community-based organization or school providing services to youth in King County? Are you interested in connecting and sharing best practices with colleagues who are engaged in school-community partnerships? This spring we are launching our fourth School-Community Partnerships Cohort. This professional development opportunity will bring together a cohort of community-based organization and school site coordinators to participate in a peer learning group focused on school-community partnerships, with training on strategies and tools from the School and Community Partnership Toolkit.

If we believe cross-sector partnerships are fundamental to achieving and sustaining student success, then what are we doing to develop and maintain lasting partnerships between schools and community-based organizations? In this session we will define sustainability and identify applicable practices within relationship building, strategic communication, documentation, partnership and program quality, and resource development

Collaborative partners in a school and community partnership context work jointly together on a program or programs towards a shared goal. Partners understand their shared goals, meet regularly, influence each other’s work, have explicit agreements around communication, and collect and review data together. This session will introduce participants to a Partnership Design and Planning Tool designed to guide partners in setting explicit expectations and building a strong foundation for future collaboration. This tool from YDEKC’s School and Community Partnership Toolkit will provide you with a takeaway resource to explore during the workshop and apply after the session in depth.