Greeley-Evans District 6 officials have found that hosting listening sessions increases community engagement and strengthens partnerships between school employees and families.
District 6 prioritizes strengthening partnerships as a focus area under the five-year strategic plan, Innovation 2030, according to Anthony Asmus, assistant superintendent of secondary education.
To carry this out, the district’s goals include implementing a comprehensive family partnership plan in every school and training staff to fulfill the plans, Asmus said in a presentation at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.
A total of 13 schools have implemented a family engagement plan, according to Brian Lemos, the director of multilingual learning and family engagement. Although District 6 wants to see all schools following their lead, the next steps include adding five more schools to the list during the 2025-26 school year.
The presentation revealed district officials’ hope to drive more families to say they’re satisfied with their student’s school climate on annual parent surveys. They’d also like more schools to implement a family engagement goal or strategy in the schools’ annual improvement plans and more school-based staff to receive training in creating family partnerships.
By 2025, the district wants 85% of families surveyed to indicate satisfaction with the school climate on the survey, according to Lemos. Last school year’s climate survey received a 76%.
The window to fill out the survey is open from now until Feb. 21. So far, the district has received more than 3,000 responses.
By 2025, 90% of schools will have a family engagement goal or strategy within their improvement plan. In the 2021-22 school year, only 33% of schools had this in place. Lemos happily shared Monday that the district already reached this goal with 93% of schools in the 2024-25 school year.
Also, the district aims for 90% of school sites to receive training in creating family partnerships to support student learning by 2027. This increased from 18% in 2022-23 to 55% in 2024-25.
Actions to strengthen family partnerships
David Reyes, the assistant director of Family Center and Cultural Excellence, shared a list of initiatives to strengthen family partnerships on Monday. These include:
The district has developed a Family Partnership Action Team of parent advocates, school staff and more. By the fall of 2025, the district will fully utilize a districtwide communication system for families and stakeholders to improve messaging function, training, technology and ease of use. The Spanish for Family Partnership program offers six-week basic Spanish lessons to improve communication between staff and Spanish-speaking families. More than 140 staff members have engaged in this offering, with 22 employees in the current lesson. District 6 also has a Family Engagement Series which focuses on attendance, open enrollment, career pathways and career and technical education recruitment, concurrent enrollment and more.Parent and family advocates also continue to support elementary, middle and K-8 schools, receiving ongoing training and professional development to engage families. The advocates also lead listening sessions “to gather information on people’s lived experiences, to provide a platform for groups to express their thoughts and ideas about a specific topic and to co-create solutions,” Reyes said.
Listening sessions
For the past two years, the district has hosted listening sessions at 11 schools.
These sessions open with District 6 employees sharing the purpose behind the gathering before a “get to know you” opportunity. Then, attendees break into smaller groups based on their language preference to share what’s on their minds and answer three questions created by the district.
1. What are your hopes and dreams for your student?
Many families in attendance had never been asked this question before, but it generated shared responses, according to Reyes. Parents want their students to have academic success and opportunities, confidence, an inclusive and accepting environment, a school free from violence, discrimination and bullying and a chance to break cycles like poverty, violence and bullying.
2. What does a welcoming school look like to you?
Parents from the listening sessions believe a welcoming school has open and transparent communication, gives support when needed, values people and has a caring culture.
3.) What can schools do better to meet your student’s needs?
Listening sessions indicated better two-way communication in native languages, increases in safety and security and comprehensive academic and emotional support as priorities.
“They trust our schools,” Reyes said about what he’s learned from family listening sessions. “Just with the sheer attendance and the vulnerability that they had when engaging in these conversations.”
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