LPCA HQPK Family Engagement Plan 2023-24

Introduction

Legacy Preparatory Charter Academy, in accordance with House Bill 3 and the High Quality PreKindergarten guidelines, created a Family Engagement Plan to foster early literacy skills with research-based strategies, activities for parents to receive communications on students' performance and strategies to support their scholars.

The LPCA Family Engagement Plan is important for the prekindergarten scholars and their families to support and provide resources to them at the beginning of their academic journey and that they continue to use throughout their academic career.

LPCA will establish an engaging classroom environment for scholars and families supported by the LPCA leadership team. These classrooms will be staffed with qualified teachers who will receive ongoing professional development to make sure they stay current on research-based family engagement strategies in alignment to the High Quality PreK TEA guidelines.

Family Engagement Plan Development Committee Members:

Darieia Jacobs

Porcha Maten

Brandi Braley

Ida Dominguez

Maria Jaramillo

Josie Eatman

Sandra Vroman

Maria Fernandez

Quishema Jones

Contact Person for Families:

Angela Humphrey

Quishema Jones

Family Engagement Plan

Plan Component	Component Description	Activity/Event/Practice Details and Timing
Facilitate Family-to-Family Support	Inclusive, transparent communications allow school personnel to create a safe and respectful environment to promote school home partnership.	LPCA Night Out Fall Festivals Health Fair Ice Cream Social Kinder Bootcamp PTO Meetings Parent Engagement Conference (Statewide Parental Involvement Conference) Family Movie Night Multicultural Night Parents Reaching out to Parents Scholastic Book Fair Veteran Day’s Program
Establish a network of community resources	Legacy Preparatory Charter Academy will build strategic partnerships with community organizations to leverage community resources for families through the community resources handbook, and ongoing district-wide events.	STEAM Family Night National Parent Involvement Day (3rd Thursday of November)
Increase family participation in decision making	Throughout the year, participation in district and school-wide decisionmaking empowers caregivers as their child’s first teacher and advocate.	Family Surveys LPCA Family Committee Annual Title I Parent Meeting Morning Coffee Chat with parents Grandparents’ breakfast
Equip families with tools to enhance and extend learning	Caregivers have multiple opportunities to learn about student progress and ways to support success at home. Caregivers also have personal extended learning opportunities.	Family/Teacher conference Fall and Spring District Curriculum Events ( Need to be specific) Bi- monthly PreK event Literacy Training Using Technology to Help Parents Work with their Children to Improve Achievement and to accomplish personal educational goals. Family Literacy Night
Provide ongoing professional development opportunities for educators	Prekindergarten teaching staff participate in professional development opportunities to support and use culturally diverse, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive family engagement strategies and enhance instruction.	LPCA District Wide Professional Development
Evaluate family engagement efforts and use results for continuous improvement	Ongoing campus/district needs assessment cycle will seek input to improve the quality of instruction, climate, and family engagement	Family Engagement surveys District Wide Climate Survey

Transition Activities:

Legacy PCA will engage with local child care providers, community churches and other organizations and businesses to share monthly updates and best practices for family engagement. We will also provide school tours to potential LPCA families and community members as well as develop a transition plan to prepare students and families for a smooth transition to PreK and beyond.

Linguistic & Culturally Inclusive Practices:

Legacy PCA will provide additional support for second language learners (Emergent Bilinguals) by inviting new to school PreK4 students to participate in our emergent bilingual summer learning session in June. Eligible four year olds will attend half-day instructional sessions up to 60 hours to expose them to language rich environments and early childhood curriculum. Teachers will utilize the Yo Aprendo! materials with the students. At the end of the summer session, parents will receive a backpack filled with instructional resources to support their scholars at home.

LPCA will also practice dual language immersion with all PreK and Kinder students. This program will have a heterogeneous mixture of native english speakers and native spanish speakers in the same classroom. The students will learn early childhood content in both English and Spanish simultaneously. The goal of this program is in alignment with our charter to ensure that all LPCA scholars are multilingual by the end of 12th grade.

Legacy Preparatory will work to ensure all school-home communications are available in both English and Spanish. As a courtesy, LPCA will strive to establish an inclusive environment for all parents by providing translators and interpreters during all events/activities.

Communication Practices:

Legacy PCA early childhood teachers will draft weekly newsletters to share with families that will cover curriculum concept overview and skills for the thematic unit and or module. Parents will have access to strategies to help their scholars with the necessary foundational skills for acquisition of early literacy and mathematics. LPCA teachers will be available to answer questions and provide support for parents through in-person or virtual conferencing, email, and phone calls.

Title I and Title 3 Requirements:

Legacy Preparatory Charter Academy (LPCA) will provide guidance, coordination, technical assistance, and other support to assist Title I, Part A schools in planning and implementing effective parental involvement activities to improve student academic achievement and school performance. As such, the Department of Special Populations staff will provide schools with a Title I School Parent Involvement Policy Checklist to help schools gauge their progress in meeting the Title I, Part A provisions for parental involvement. District staff will conduct an onsite review of parental involvement activities and documents to provide individualized technical assistance to each Title I school.

Find more information pertaining to Title I and Title 3 requirements on the Legacy PCA Parent Involvement Policy.

Parent Conferences:

Legacy Preparatory has built three opportunities for face-to-face parent conferences nights into the school calendar.

September 27-28

November 29-30

February 21-22

Parents are encouraged to request conferences if any behavioral or academic concerns arise. LPCA teachers will be available to answer questions and provide support for parents through in-person or virtual conferencing, email, and phone calls.

Student Progress:

Student progress and current data will be shared with families from assessments administered under CIRCLE/CLI and or mCLASS.

Students are to be assessed in the five primary domains of development, which include:

Emergent Literacy – Reading
Emergent Literacy – Writing
Language and Communication
Mathematics
Health and Wellness

Program Expectations:

Legacy Preparatory will design an early childhood program aligned to the criteria set for high quality PreK per TEA. The district will ensure the following program expectations are met throughout the school year, concluding with an annual program evaluation that will be submitted to the state.

Goal: Increase Kinder Readiness Scores from 24% to 58% to mirror the state average.

Under the parameters of HB3, LEAs are required to service eligible 4 year olds in their community.
LPCA will create a free full-day PreK-4 program to foster early literacy skills with research-based strategies anchored in the Science of Teaching Reading.
LPCA will use high quality curriculum materials aligned to the 2022 PreK Guidelines, and progress monitoring tools in compliance with the Educator Commissioner's List of approved resources.
LPCA will align district enrollment processes for PreK students in compliance with the student to teacher ratio per TEA. Open enrollment will be ongoing for all eligible families.
LPCA will draft a Family Engagement plan including activities for parents to receive updates on student performance and social emotional support strategies.
LPCA will select and retain certified teachers and develop a sustainable plan for ongoing professional learning opportunities to meet teacher qualifications in alignment with a High Quality PreK program.
LPCA will establish engaging classroom environments with the appropriate developmental transitions and learning centers.

Attendance Plan:

Regular school attendance is essential for the scholar to make the most of his or her education and to benefit from facilitator-supervised activities, to build each day’s learning on that of the previous day, and to grow as an individual. Absences from class will affect a scholar’s ability to succeed in class; therefore, scholars and parents should make every effort to avoid unnecessary absences. Additionally, state law mandates compulsory school attendance for children of a certain age, and LPCA policy deals with attendance for course credit and a scholar’s final grade.

More information about the district’s attendance policies can be found in the Legacy PCA Student Handbook.

Family Engagement Activity Calendar:

Calendar links will be shared once available.

Participation Goals:

LPCA will monitor participation rates of family engagement activities and provide assistance to campuses whose average participation rate is below 30% of families.

Goal: To increase family engagement at school and community based activities and events.

Conduct an annual evaluation with families to identify activities and actions that are successful and support effective parental engagement.

Conduct school and district wide surveys and share the results at meetings and update the school and district Title I plans to include new activities to meet identified needs.

Work with the community to share information with parents and to market parent engagement activities to help increase the number of parents who attend parent programs and activities.

Maximize parental involvement and participation in their children’s education by arranging school meetings at a variety of times.

Community Resources and Support:

Legacy Preparatory will work to schedule monthly assistance regarding community resources to meet the economic and social service needs of our families. LPCA will utilize various methods to connect families with services available within the community.

Goal: Community Liaison will create partnerships with community agencies and organizations to assist LPCA families.

Community liaison will create partnerships based on the needs of the LPCA families.

Community liaison will strengthen the communication and collaboration between schools and parents/community.

Community liaisons will work with leadership to provide monthly communication with school staff and families with updates on school and community activities and events as well as community resources.

Conclusion:

The Legacy Preparatory Charter Academy Family Engagement Plan is one of the strategies our district will use to guide collaborative success. The positive school-home relationships between staff and families that LPCA promotes through the Family Engagement plan, help build a shared understanding of pre-kindergarten and beyond.

Legacy PCA Family Engagement Plan URL for ECDS submission: https://docs.google.com/documLPCA HQPK Family Engagement Plan 2023-24ent/d/1tRLuvkdHgWBfvXtnlnrtYMB12H5oMxumcPMcH0XY3Dg/edit