ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors identify strategies for creating community partnerships and family engagement programs. Just as school members are education experts, community members are neighborhood experts. Community partnerships can increase parent and family engagement, promote community trust in schools, encourage community service, increase students opportunities to learn (OTLs), contribute to positive social and emotional development, and improve student attendance and academic achievement. School leaders must be strategic and imagine how a community partnership can address the needs of as many people as possible as frequently as possible, long after the MOU expires. Family partnerships, like community partnerships, are about mobilizing collective assets to improve neighborhood well-being. But unlike community partnerships, there need not be an MOU because there is already a mutual understanding that the people will do whatever it takes to support kids.
