Family, School, and Community Partnerships

Call for Submissions - Promising Partnership Practices 2025

The State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Education (SACPIE), in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), is collecting promising partnership practices from schools, districts, early childhood programs, and institutes of higher education across the state to publish in the 11th annual Promising Partnership Practices—Colorado book.  SACPIE and CDE invite schools, districts, early childhood centers, institutions of higher education, accountability committees, parent-teacher committees, or any other school- or district-based council to submit an application for consideration in the publication.  The purpose of this book is for schools, districts, and other educational organizations in Colorado to share how they partner with families and the community for student success.

Practices may be submitted using this Google form or this Word document.

For more information about Promising Partnership practices, visit the website.

News and Updates

Happy Family-School Partnership in Education Month!

In November, Colorado celebrates Family and School Partnership in Education Month! This month recognizes the positive outcomes that partnerships have on students, schools, families, and the broader community. Governor Polis recently issued a proclamation recognizing that family engagement leads to higher levels of academic performance, better attendance, and lower dropout rates. The Office of Family, School, and Community Partnerships is proud to partner with districts across Colorado to highlight high impact family engagement practices that lead to measurable outcomes for children and youth.

Read the Proclamation here | Spanish

New Resource - Stakeholder Engagement in Federal Programs

The meaningful engagement of stakeholders is required under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reauthorized in 2016 as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Meaningful stakeholder engagement requires structures and processes that ensure the ongoing collaboration and input of a variety of stakeholders who represent the demographics of districts, schools and programs.  Stakeholders include: families, students, educators, and community members. This document is designed to help districts and schools meet federal stakeholder engagement requirements, using evidence-based principles of strong family, school, and community partnerships. Organized by ESEA Stakeholder Engagement Program Requirements (SE), this guidance provides compliance requirements, examples of evidence, resources and implementation guidance for districts receiving ESEA funds and participating in regular federal programs monitoring.

View Stakeholder Engagement in Federal Programs [pdf].

New Resource - Designing Parent/Family Notifications

Using the P-12 FSCP Framework lens, this document provides ideas on ways districts and schools can intentionally design parent notifications that meet state and federal requirements, increase engagement, and ensure  families are able to understand, remember, and use the important information provided.

View Designing Parent/Family Notifications [pdf].

New Resource - Launching Student Success with Family, School, and Community Partnerships

A new resource is available for schools and districts to share with staff, families, and community partners on the what, why, and how of FSCP. This one-pager can be used to explain what FSCP is when recruiting family engagement team members, share research-based outcomes of high-impact family engagement practices, and briefly outline the steps to an impactful FSCP program at the school and district level.

View Launching Student Success with Family, School, and Community Partnerships.

View the Spanish version of Launching Student Success with Family, School, and Community Partnerships.

2024 Edition of Promising Partnership Practices Now Available

The State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Education (SACPIE) and the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) are pleased to share this 10th annual collection of Promising Partnership Practices. The purpose of this publication is for schools, districts, and other educational organizations in Colorado to highlight how they partner with families and the community for student success.

View the 2024 collection of Promising Partnership Practices.

Family Engagement Surveys for Educator Preparation Programs

 The Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Higher Education, with input from Colorado families, K-12 educators, and higher education faculty, developed two surveys to better understand what skills, dispositions, and beliefs general education teachers need to meaningfully engage with PK-12 students’ families. The purpose of these surveys is to provide data that informs and supports educator preparation programs on preparing future teachers to effectively partner with students’ families. 

Find the surveys on our Research and Evaluation page under "Evaluation Tools."

New Resource - Engaging Stakeholders in Planning

A new resource is available to assist districts and schools as they meaningfully engage stakeholders in a variety of family and community engagement planning activities.

See the Engaging Stakeholders in Planning document here.

FSCP Coffee Chat Website

There is a new FSCP Coffee Chat Website available for district-level family engagement staff. Find dates, Zoom links, locations, and presentation slides and resources.

Visit the FSCP Coffee Chat website here.

High Impact Practices Website

The Family, School, and Community Partnerships Office has designed a new webpage based on the Flamboyan Foundation's Continuum of Impact on Student Success to help schools and districts implement high impact family engagement strategies. Strategies are linked to specific promising partnership practices, as well as additional resources from the field.

Visit the Continuum of Impact High Impact Strategies here.

CDE's Family, School, and Community Partnerships Online Learning Center

The Family, School, and Community Partnerships Office is excited to share our Online Learning Center. This learning center is a hub of online courses developed by CDE's FSCP Office. Courses are available to all at no charge and are self-paced. Currently, eight courses are offered.

To see which courses are available and the intended audience for each, click here.

Family-School-Community Partnership Framework Collaborative and User's Guide

New resources are now available to help schools/early childhood programs, districts, and community-based partners to implement the P-12 FSCP Framework. A series of 12 rubrics allows sites to rate their current partnership programs and practices. During the 2021-2022 school year, six districts piloted the P-12 FSCP Framework. Their stories are shared in the accompanying User's Guide, which walks sites through a step-by-step, research-based process to identify starting points and prioritize next steps.

Rubrics are now available for either District Leadership Teams, Early Childhood/School Leadership Teams, or Community-Based Partners:

• FSCP P-12 Framework: User's Guide (PDF) - for District Leadership Teams
• FSCP P-12 Framework: User's Guide (PDF or Word) -  for Early Childhood/School Leadership Teams
• FSCP P-12 Framework: User's Guide (PDF) - for Community-Based Partners

The Office of Family School and Community Partnerships developed a self-paced course available to anyone who would like to learn more about the P-12 FSCP Framework and rubrics. Individuals who complete the course will receive five hours of professional development credits.

Visit the Colorado's P-12 FSCP Framework: User's Guide Course

About The Office of Family-School-Community Partnerships

The Office of Family-School-Community Partnerships sits within the Accountability and Continuous Improvement Office at CDE, and was created in response to Senate Bill 13-193 Increasing Parent Involvement in Public Schools. Responsibilities of the office include:

• Supporting to schools and districts implementing Family and Community Engagement practices
• Incorporating strategies in the Unified Improvement Plan to increase parent engagement in schools, with a specific focus on priority performance and turnaround schools.
• Ensuring that school district board of education adopt district policy for increasing and supporting parent engagement in the public and charter schools of the district
• Communicating and providing support to the identified family partnership point of contact within school districts
• Supporting parent participation on school and district accountability committees (SACs and DACs)
• Staffing the State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Education (SACPIE)

Family and School Partnership in Education Month

Governor Polis has declared November to be Family and School Partnership in Education Month. 

Read the Proclamation here | Spanish

Research indicates that family, school and community partnerships lead to improved students’ attendance, higher graduation rates and a deeper sense of belonging (Mapp et al., 2022). Districts interested in promoting Family and School Partnership in Education Month can use this communications toolkit.

In November 2022, the Family, School, and Community Partnerships Office celebrated at the Denver Zoo. Governor Polis shared a few words and read the Proclamation in English and in Spanish. Schools set up displays of their promising practices and Scholastic was in attendance giving away free books to the kids in attendance. Check out the video to hear the governor's remarks and see a few of the promising practices.