It will be unveiled during the school’s Open House at on Sept. 29, said Susan Willoughby-Crawford, the high school English Department chair.
She said the center, which will be open to parents during normal school hours 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, also will offer information about workshops it is offering in conjunction with the Parent Resource Center at Highview Elementary, the Ohio Graduation Test, online access to college testing and admission data, and student loans, she said.
The center will allow parents to gain access to two computers where they can check their child’s grades and research college and career information, Crawford said.
Denise Lepe-Perkins, the school’s English as a Second Language Coordinator, also will be on hand to assist parents that have ESL needs, she said.
“We’ll also have some basic information too. A lot of times what happens parents come into buildings — especially high schools and this is a large high school — and they are not sure who they should contact about what. We’ll have information regarding contacting teachers, we’ll have list of counselors, list of principals and that will help them better determine who the go to person is in that case,” Crawford said.
She said the idea came up to launch the center after she took a Family School and Community Partnership class at Miami University at the Voice of America campus in West Chester Twp.
“One of the things I had to do in that class, I had to come up with a project to present at the end. I had to do a lot of research and it was kind of natural thing to research the district where I’m working,” Crawford said.
“During the class, we covered a lot of the things we can do as educators to connect with families to connect with communities and to even connect with business entities. As we went through the class and especially when you deal with the urban setting in education, there’s a real need for us to not only reach out to a lot of our students, but we need to reach out to those parents to and help give them some resources.”
Crawford said she notice during conferences a lot of parents were not aware the district had an online grading system where they can check the grades.
“A lot of our families don’t have internet access at home. We just wanted to kind of make it easier and give them a space where they cannot only connect with different staff members in the building and get some resources they need, but also give them access to some of the online things we offer. There was just a need for it,” she said.
Michael Bailey, the coordinator at the high school, also is expanding the services he provides students to assist parents utilizing the center, Crawford said.
About the Author