helping families

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By Soraia Santos Felgenhauer, OCES Assistant Principal

OCONEE COUNTY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Oconee County Elementary School has started a new concept for their school that we thought would be beneficial to share with other schools in our community. If you’re interested, maybe you can work with your child’s school to start one too! - Sarah Danis, Editor

THE OCONEE COUNTY ELEMENTARY School (OCES) Family Engagement Center is a place that was created to welcome families and provide a place where collaboration and partnership can be fostered to support the success of each student. Parents can access the Family Engagement Center’s website (www.oconeeschools.org/domain/2232) where they can be connected with information, resources, and ways to get involved to support the school’s mission to meet the needs of every child that comes to OCES. It is our belief that the OCES Family Engagement Center will support an environment that will allow parents, guardians, and families to further support their child’s ability to succeed in school.The vision of the Family Engagement Center is to be sweet as pie and here are the slices that would describe our goal.

20 Athens-Oconee Parent

Family Engagement Center Five Slices of Parental Involvement Slice 1:VOLUNTEERING GOAL: Recruit and organize parent help and support. Slice 2: PARENTING GOAL: Help all families establish home environments to support children as students. Slice 3: COMMUNICATING GOAL: Design more effective forms of schoolto-home and home-to-school communications with all families each year about school programs and their children’s progress. Slice 4: LEARNING AT HOME GOAL: Provide information and ideas to families about how to help students at home with homework and other curricular-related activities, decisions, and planning. Slice 5: COLLABORATING WITH COMMUNITY GOAL: Identify and integrate resources and services from the community to strengthen school programs, family practices, and student learning and development. We thus far have created a lending library to support Title I students and also a lending library to support non-Title I students.We have built partnerships with community businesses which have made a great difference in supporting student success. An example of this partnership would be Publix Supermarket