Parents Engaged in Education
Annual Report 2016 – 2017
Prepared by: Theresa Pastore
Executive Director
October 2017
www.parentsengagedineducation.ca
Executive Summary
Parents Engaged in Education (PEIE) is a not-for-profit organization established in October 2015. Our mission is clearly defined in the goals of the organization which include:
- To promote involvement and engage parents in their children’s education to increase academic achievement.
- To provide resources and skill building opportunities for parents/guardians and school council members in support of children’s education.
- To implement a succession plan to have continuity in the school community to engage parents and the school community.
- To provide resources to parents to assist them in engaging and supporting their children’s learning.
In the second year of operations, Parents Engaged in Education has made significant progress is meeting our goals. This report provides details of the work accomplished as well as present challenges and plans to address these challenges.
Board of Directors and Officers
Director/President – Robert Selvadurai
Director/Vice-President – Lisa Landriault
Director/Treasurer – Nicholas Pastore
Director/Secretary – Dawn Papadimitriou
Director – Adrian Marmara
Director – Nadia Taylor
Executive Director – Theresa Pastore
DREAM BIG -3 year plan to engage parents and school communities to DREAM BIG for all students!
Beginning with the 2017 school year, Parents Engaged in Education launched our DREAM BIG initiative. Our short- term plan will run from the 2017 to the 2020 school year.
The goal of this project is to:
- Start a positive movement in parents and ultimately students to DREAM BIG for themselves and their school.
- To build strong school communities that support the DREAMS of all students.
- To work with parent involvement committees to spread the message and importance of DREAMING BIG for all parents in their board.
- To develop a relationship with the Ministry of Education in Ontario to support this mission by recognizing Parents Engaged in Education’s DREAM BIG project as a valuable one to parents across the province and to assist financially to expand our ability to provide resources to support the initiative, especially in priority neighbourhoods across Ontario.
Parents Engaged in Education created the DREAM TREE and DREAM BIG messaging banners as visible tools for schools to encourage all students to DREAM BIG!
The DREAM TREE has over 150 blank leaves for parents and students to write their dreams for themselves and their school communities. The DREAM TREE will be a living example of the dreams of all those who make up the school community and remind students to all strive to be the best that they can be.
Parents Engaged in Education are raising funds to put 250 DREAM TREES in priority schools in Ontario where the message to DREAM BIG is so important for students, teachers and parents!
Resources and Skill Building Opportunities for School Councils and Parents
Parents Engaged in Education have increased their series of School Council Brochures to a total of 13 to empower parent leaders to be effective partners with school administrators and work to improve the educational experience of all students in the school.
The goal of these resources is to assist school council chairs and administrators to offer members meetings which are engaging and valuable to parents that attend.
These brochures are available for free download from our website and have also been provided to parents that attended the dream big symposium by way of the USB lanyard they received.
Monthly E-newsletter
In addition to the above, Parents Engaged in Education write and distribute the monthly School Council Newsletter. This newsletter is distributed to every Director of Education and directly to 998 principals directly, with the permission of the appropriate school boards.
This year we have partnered with Sara Westbrook as a contributing author in every monthly issue of the newsletter. In addition, we continue to seek other professionals to write and add value to the newsletter for parents.
Now that we are using Constant Contact as our distribution mechanism we can track our data regarding those that open and click through when we send out any of our newsletters and resources.
Though this information we know that approximately 46 English school boards open and click or forward our newsletters. This is an amazing result considering the newness of the organization.
Tip Sheets
In addition, to our brochure and newsletter series, this year we added a series of tip sheets providing quick summaries on various topics specific to school councils and parents in general.
Blogs
We have also added a great blog to our website which offers great articles on many topics in areas such as school councils and social media strategies.
Parent Engagement Forum
Parents Engaged in Education have launched the first Parent Engagement Forum and online discussion format for parents across the province to share, learn and network with each other.
Parents Engaged in Education – Events for parents 2016 – 17
During the 2016-17 school year, Parents Engaged in Education hosted two events. Both offered free of charge to parents.
APRIL 22, 2017 – DREAM BIG – School Council Event
This event was held at Bill Crothers Secondary School in YRDSB and was a full day of learning for parents.
The feedback on this event was amazing and the variety of session were very popular. These included:
EQAO – What parents should know
Ontario College of Teachers – Social media tips for parents
Bargains Group – Fundraising and Branding for schools
Apple Canada – How children learn to code (hands on workshop)
Argos Huddle Up—Anti-bullying
Theresa Pastore – Building Strong School Councils
Ontario Ombudsman – The role of the Ombudsman’s office
OCTOBER 28, 2017 – DREAM BIG – School Council Training Symposium
This second in the series of DREAM BIG events offered school council members from across Ontario to learn, share and network with each other. The purpose was to encourage parent engagement and equip school council members to strengthen their skills in order to be even more effective partners with school principals.
This full day event was offered in partnership with the York District School Board who provide free space to host the event.
Parents attended from 10 difference school boards with some coming as far away as Thunder Bay and Windsor. This event saw increasing attendance and fantastic feedback from those in attendance.
Topics included:
Theresa Pastore – Building Strong School Councils
Theresa Pastore – Multi-cultural school councils
Theresa Pastore – Developing a three-year plan
Trixie Doyle – Roles and Responsibilities of Council Chairs
Michelle Aarts – Roles and Responsibilities of Council Treasurers
Lisa Landriault – Roles and Responsibilities of Council Secretaries
Jocelyn Reyes Midghall – Roles and Responsibilities of Parent Members
Adrian Marmara – Ins and Outs of Social Media for school councils
Nadia Young – Partnering with the Principal
Kate Jones – Team Building and Conflict Resolution
Martin Paquette (Main Event) – Planning a Successful Event
Jody Steinhauer (Bargains Group) – Fundraising and Branding
Each participant was provided with a USB Lanyard name badge holder that was pre-loaded with event powerpoints as well as and extensive array of Parents Engaged in Education resources including the brochure series, tips sheets and blog articles.
This event was partially funded by our first PARENT REACHING OUT GRANT from the Ministry of Education.
In addition, the Minister of Education Mitzi Hunter provided a video welcome message which recognized Parents Engaged in Education as valuable partners in the area of parent engagement and the importance of our DREAM BIG initiative.
Parent Engagement App Development
September 2016 was an exciting time for Parents Engaged in Education as we began the process of developing the first every PARENT ENGAGEMENT APP that connects parents to the curriculum.
Guided by Apple Canada and with the work of two master students from Lambton College Mobile Technology Program (this work is their program requirement to complete their program), we began the process of seeing our ideas come to life.
This app will be a mobile game that have parents entering the game at the JK /SK level and takes them through to Grade 12. Players will be asked questions based on the curriculum of that grade. Questions will be random and on various subjects. They need five questions right out of seven in order to move to the next level. If they fail to get five correct they start that level over again. If the player gets five questions in a row correct they get a bonus and proceed to the next grade level. Each question will have a pop-up window once the parent has answered which will give a tip to the player on why their children learn this item and how a parent can do more at home.
Besides introducing parents to the curriculum on a grade by grade level, we believe it will naturally lead parents to work with their children to answer the questions. If the parents is at a grade which their child has already passed and yet they cannot answer the questions, we hope it will encourage them to have a conversation with their child’s teacher to let them know that there seems to be a gap in their learning and address it immediately before it is a problem in future grades.
Challenges in app development
The co-op students completed their course in April 2017, however, the app was left in an incomplete state. It does, however, have the possibilities of being completed by other programmers without a great deal of work.
We are pursuing volunteers to complete the project as well as raising funds to contract a programmer to complete the project.
Website and Social Media
Thanks to our Chief Digital Officer, Adrian Marmara our Facebook following grew from 51 to over 440. Likewise, we saw a significant growth in our Twitter followers.
Adrian created a new event site for the DREAM BIG events (dreambig.parentsengagedineducation.ca) which has facilitated an opportunity to provide comprehensive information about presenters and vendors. It also allows for a registration link directly from the website.
Our website has enjoyed a higher profile on Google, coming up in the top three when a search is made for parent engagement in Ontario. This has helped to contribute to more than 250 new e-newsletter subscribers on our site this year.
In addition, we have posted a large number of blog articles providing parent engagement, school council and social media topics.
Parents Engaged in Education and School Boards in Ontario
We have been active in outreach to school boards this year. Our Executive Director has met with senior staff at the TCDSB, TDSB, YRDSB , WCDSB and DDSB. These meetings have been very positive and have resulted in more awareness and support of our mission.
It is important that meetings with other school board staff and parent involvement committees be expanded over the next two years in order that we can accomplish our important strategic goals.. Simply communicating electronically means that it is hard to fully engage them in our DREAM BIG spirit.
The challenge to doing this is a lack of available funds to support the necessary travel costs.
Parents Engaged in Education Parent Resource Centre
Thanks to the support of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, Parents Engaged in Education will open our Parent Resource Centre and Head
Office on January 2018.
This centre will offer small group training opportunities for school council members in Ontario on important topics relative to the effective operations of parent councils.
In addition, interactive sessions for parents to learn skills to support their children at home will be featured at this location.
The establishment of this centre also allows Parents Engaged in Education to support student coop programs in local schools by offering opportunities for students to work and learn in the charitable sector in Ontario. We will be offering three coop students an opportunity to work with us in the winter semester.
Charitable Status and Fundraising Strategies
In June 2017, Parents Engaged in Education were awarded our charitable status by the Canada Revenue Agency.
The ability to issue tax receipts for donors will assist in our fundraising plans.
We have also joined Canada Helps as a fundraising mechanism to assist in promoting our cause and handling the administration of the donation process.
Our focus this year will be on GIVING TUESDAY which is a highly publicized day when individuals and corporations are encouraged to donate to charities across Canada.
Parents Engaged in Education holiday baskets for needy students (annual drive)
This year Parents Engaged in Education was successful in assembling 35 holiday baskets which were distributed to schools in the Malvern area of Scarborough.
Students are selected by the school Principal and told that they won a prize from Parents Engaged in Education. The purpose is to remove the stigma of children feeling they have to accept charity.
Conclusion
It has been an exciting year for Parents Engaged in Education as we have seen the results of our work in the positive engagement of parents in the province.
We have also seen several important barriers reduced which allows us to better support our goals.
The plan for 2017-18 is to expand our DREAM BIG message as well as our work to engage parents in their children’s education resulting in increased academic achievement and physical/mental well-being.
