The Education Foundation has a lot going on. It has gained two parent community engagement specialists, plans to host a parent academy and offer more community events.
“What we’ve been doing is researching and trying to identify the best ways to better engage our parents in the community. We went to a training in Frisco in December, and an idea was shared by another school district for a parent leadership academy. So we’re going to move forward with that and introduce it in the fall,” Foundation Director Celeste Potter said.
It is a semester-long program that empowers parents to advocate for their child, themselves and their families.
“It will be free for parents to participate in. There will be certain courses that they have to complete to graduate from the program at the end of the semester. On top of that, we’re going to offer optional courses for them to attend that will be open to any parent in the district,” Potter said.
The hope is that parents can start signing up in June. The first program would start in September after Labor Day and finish in December.
Some of the courses that will be offered will be navigating the school system, strengthening academic success outside of the classroom, and understanding their role in the community as a parent, parenting in the digital age, and bridging the math gap between school and home. Other possibilities are six ways to support your child’s literacy development and pathways to adulthood helping parents understand how they can prepare their students for leaving home.
The Foundation is hoping to partner with nonprofits like Junior Achievement and West Texas Food Bank that provide these types of services.
“We’re even hoping we can partner with Odessa College and UT Permian Basin to offer some college tours, just so that the parents and their students can start getting on those campuses and getting familiar with them,” Potter said.
When the foundation got the two parent community engagement specialists, Potter said they felt like they got off to a slow start because they had to research what they could do and find the right fit for the community.
“We’ve already talked to Odessa College; we’ve already talked to some representatives from the university who are all excited about how they can help. Hopefully this will be a new resource that our district provides to their families on a regular basis. Then kind of copying off the Odessa Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Odessa, using the first parents who graduate from that class as people who help us with the following course,” Potter said.
The Education Foundation is having a fundraiser at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Ector Theatre. It will feature Grammy Award-winning songwriters Liz Rose, Lori McKenna, and Phil Barton. They will offer an evening of storytelling and some performing.
Potter said there also are plans to build a reading garden in back of the Development Office. They are hoping to have a “big unveil” this summer.
“I’m working with ECISD horticulture students. They’re actually going to do the plants and then some art students at Crockett (Middle School) are going to be taking bricks and making them look like books. … There will be a place that will be opened during the day. We’ve got a lot of students from OHS during their lunch hour, they’re just hanging around and provide a nice safe space for them to hang out and also beautify the neighborhood. We’ve been working with a local artist to do a mural back there,” Potter said.
“We’re hoping in the ‘23-‘24 school year we’ll be able to do a lot more community-type events. We even talked about working with some food trucks to have food truck Fridays or something out here where we can … bring people to our offices where we can share information about who we are, what we do and how people can help because we do have a lot of volunteer opportunities, a lot of partner opportunities. We’re just trying to think of creative ways to gather people,” Potter said.
