School of Excellence Program

Stephen Foster Elementary PTA has enrolled in the National PTA School of Excellence Program. This post will describe what exactly that means and how you can help our school achieve this prestigious award.

What is the School of Excellence Program?

The School of Excellence designation is a program that honors PTAs that make a year-long commitment to improving family-school partnerships based upon the national standards. Our efforts will be based upon our current areas in need of improvement.

National Standards for Family-School Partnerships

1. Welcoming all families
2. Communicating effectively
3. Supporting student success
4. Speaking up for every child
5. Sharing power
6. Collaborating with community

Steps to Achieve the School of Excellence Designation

STEP 1: Enroll and gain support in the Program (COMPLETE)

An Excellence Team has been established to enroll and implement this program. We have enrolled in the program and will proceed with the other steps; however, we need your support.

STEP 2: Survey The School Community (COMPLETE)

In order to determine what the needs of our school community are, we are encouraging all families to fill out a 5-minute, anonymous survey to share your opinions. The survey is anonymous, so please be as honest as possible. This is how we will know what areas we need to work on to improve.

Deadline: Friday, Oct. 11, 2019

The link to the online survey and flyer has been removed. No more submissions will be accepted.

STEP 3: Establish A Shared Objective (COMPLETE)

The Excellence Team will evaluate all survey submissions to determine the areas where we can improve and how our PTA can better engage with families. The Excellence Team will then pick one focus area and objective to concentrate on for the current school year. The focus area and objective will be in one of these three categories: education, health & safety, or arts.

GOAL UPDATE (10/21/19): Our goal is to ensure emergency preparedness for school and personal safety.

STEP 4: Submit the initial application detailing our objective and plan (COMPLETE)

Once the focus area and objective have been established, the Excellence Team will submit the initial application to the National PTA.

STEP 5: Implement our plan throughout the school year (CURRENT STEP)

The Excellence Team is currently developing our School of Excellence action plan and will update this section soon. Our team will work throughout the school year to improve areas of need and increase family engagement.

The goal here is to move the needle to the ALWAYS category in areas of need on the final survey.

STEP 6: Survey the school community again to determine our progress

In order to determine whether or not our efforts were a success, our Excellence Team will distribute another survey at the end of the year. It is our goal to have improved on areas of need and increase family engagement.

STEP 7: Submit the final application

The Excellence Team will submit the final application to the National PTA to be considered for the School of Excellence program.

STEP 8: Celebrate excellence

PTAs that have earned the School of Excellence designation will be notified in August 2020.

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