How can PIRC Vermont Help You?


Dear Educators:
Parent involvement.  You hear a lot about it.  Research shows it has a strong influence on a child’s academic achievement.  But what should it look like?  What do you want it to mean at your school?  What are your successes?  And what kind of help do you need to take it to the next level? 
In particular, how do we connect with parents of children that we know are least likely to enjoy school success: children living in poverty; children with social, emotional and behavioral challenges; children whose parents had negative school experiences? How do we welcome and support all parents to play a positive role in their child’s education?
Whether your interests are simple or wide ranging, PIRC Vermont can help.  We can offer you the resources and support to help you clarify and address your school’s unique parent involvement goals.  Offering you a combination of Vermont-grown best practices and research-driven activities, you can look to PIRC Vermont to be a real partner for you in helping children succeed in school.
Here are just some examples of what PIRC Vermont can do with you at your school:

  1. Work directly with you to craft and carry out strategic activities and plans that are responsive to your unique parent involvement needs and interests.
  2. Help you to develop and/or review your parent involvement policy or action plan and home-school compacts, not only in preparation for Title 1 monitoring visits, but also to identify and maximize opportunities for including substantive parent involvement activities.
  3. Assist you in conducting a “family friendly walkthrough” and a parent survey to assess the family friendliness of your school environment.  Provide recommendations for enhancements and support you in making desired changes. 
  4. Deliver workshops to teachers, administrators, parent involvement coordinators, parent leaders and parents on diverse topics such as:  Maximizing Parent Teacher Conferences; Developing Relationships with Diverse and Hard to Reach Families; Helping Children be Ready for Kindergarten; and Effective Communication:  Building Home School Partnerships, among others.
  5. Assist you in setting up and planning for how to maintain a resource center (ranging from a rack to a room) containing materials, in multiple languages and formats, for parents on education topics and ways to support their child in school.
  6. Help you to survey parents to identify what is important to them and to identify any obstacles facing them when it comes to their involvement with school.
  7. Work with you to establish and help you support a parent advisory council – comprised of parents and educators – that can help your school community assess, design, and implement parent involvement activities.
  8. Provide understandable communications on supplemental education services and school choice options.
  9. Help you assess your current communication practices and support you in making helpful changes.

We look forward to working collaboratively with you to help all children succeed in school!

PIRC Vermont (Parent Information and Resource Center)
at the Vermont Family Network in Partnership with
The Parent Child Center Network of Vermont
600 Blair Park Road, Suite 240
Williston, VT 05495

802-876-5315 or 800-800-4005

Solid Foundation Program Offered Through the Vermont Parent Information Resource Center:  
(PIRC VT)

Solid Foundation improves student achievement through parent engagement.  This web-based program is grounded in effective, research based, proven strategies.  A study of schools implementing Solid Foundation program for building a school community, published by the Harvard Family Research Project, found that the gain on state assessment tests demonstrated by these schools over a two year period was nearly double that of a control group of schools with identical beginning scores.  The process of service and support, provided through the Parent Information Resource Center (PIRC), is tailored to the resources and needs of each school.

Solid Foundation is a comprehensive parent engagement program developed by the Academic Development Institute. The goal of this program is to “improve student’s learning and school success by informing, equipping, and empowering parents to enhance their children’s learning at home, support their children’s learning at school, and make decisions about their children’s learning and schooling.”

PIRC Vermont is offering a one time $1,000 stipend for the first ten schools to pilot Solid Foundation in Vermont.  This money is earmarked to help support increasing parental involvement and may be used for: childcare so that parents can attend a training workshop, food for a school-sponsored function, transportation costs to aid underrepresented parent who may not usually attend, or even provide gas card incentives to parents who agree to participate!  This money may also be used to create or update a Parent Resource Center in your school (ranging from a rack to a room of resources), or to purchase books/DVD’s for training purposes.  Printing expenses associated with fees for creating a Volunteer Resource Manual, or invitations for parents to attend school functions may be a way for your school to utilize these funds.   

For more information about this opportunity to increase parental involvement or any of the other training opportunities and services offered FREE of charge by PIRC VT, please contact the Director, Kathleen Kilbourne at 876-5315 ext. 244 or visit our website at http://www.pircvermont.org/.

We look forward to working collaboratively with schools and all families.