Establishing Partnership and Inviting Investment

Adaptive challenges such as implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or any improvement initiative requires collective action achieved through clear communication and genuine investment from key partners. Additionally, these initiatives may raise questions or concerns from community members that leaders should be ready to respond to.  

In building community investment for any plan, it is crucial that:

Inviting Investment – Equitable Partnership and Communication Plans

For any major improvement strategy your school or district selects, even if different than the above, create a communication plan to keep all relevant partners informed of any Action Steps that impact their students. Keeping families in particular informed about goals and actions allows them to know that their priorities and perspectives are being heard.

Community engagement is critical to success in implementing any continuous improvement plan because not only can school personnel not do the work alone, not having community support can create an enormous barrier to change. Alterations in the power relationship between schools and families can create new opportunities, and the involvement of partners brings important local knowledge to guide reforms and increases the likelihood of sustainability. If a school community believes short-term struggle will lead to long-term improvements, they may be more receptive to difficult reforms. 

A strong family communication and partnership plan

• Ensures that all partners and audiences are considered in the communication plan for developing and sharing the equity plan.
• Engages the community as a problem solver. Create an ongoing feedback loop to engage partners in the impact, lack of impact or unintended impact of the equity plan implementation.
• Ensures that development, implementation, progress monitoring and periodic revisions of the plan are communicated to all stakeholders. It is crucial to create a defined plan based on a clear message, with measurable assessments, benchmarks and outcomes.  
• Intentionally creates “pulse checks” (short surveys, brief interviews, etc.) to seek feedback throughout the continuous implementation and improvement process.
• Communicates how feedback and suggestions from partners have been incorporated.
• Has effective messengers, so that your message will be received and your audience will be engaged. 
• Is kept in partners’ awareness through frequent references in communications, newsletters and remarks. 

If you find yourself hearing from the same group of parents consistently, consider adjusting your outreach to include parents who work evenings, speak a language other than English, have limited time to commit, who may have had previous frustrating experiences with school or who may be unfamiliar with the norms of the U.S. school system.

Additionally, part of keeping families apprised of major improvement strategies and action steps can be providing information that empowers families to be effective partners in the work. For example, families can support their student attendance at school or at before- and afterschool tutoring sessions and reinforce academic or behavioral supports at home. 

It is also important to create investment among staff for actions that promote equity. Leadership should communicate with teachers and other instructional and noninstructional staff the goals of any continuous improvement plan, including key equity goals. 

It is possible that some community members or staff will have questions about the importance of investing resources in diversity, equity and inclusion and may be put off by politicized concepts and buzzwords. Planning ahead for how you will respond to these questions is a key piece of creating an impactful communication plan.