Reply to APS PTA partnerships

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My children are in college, so it has been a while. When they were at Chesterbrook Elementary School (not an Arlington school, but close by), we had a partnership with Campbell ES through a friendship between our social worker and their social worker I believe.  There were things like coat drives, supply drives, summer book drives and gift certificate drives for Thanksgiving and December holidays.  It was not an official partnership between the PTAs, but our PTA was the one who organized things from our side.  I think it petered out when the school closed for renovations, or changed names or the personal link no longer existed.  
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This is the problem with traditional partnerships - they tend to be "charity" oriented to meet basic needs of impoverished communities.  While helpful, these partnership programs merely maintain the status quo.  It's time for a new approach - teams/partnerships that go beyond material goods and a donation here or there.  Schools and their PTAs need to look at teaming up as a unified group and fundraise collectively, fund enrichment programs collectively, give teacher mini-grants and funding for teacher training for teachers at all the schools, hold events for all the schools to participate/attend together, establish academic exchanges, go on field trips together, etc.  Getting parents and children to interact is what will start to make a real difference.  [/quote]

Even then, it still ends up being an unequal partnership with all of the money flowing from the richer school to the poorer school. I don't think there's any way to get around the charity case dynamic when you are pairing unequal communities. That doesn't mean it can't make a real difference for some kids, though. [/quote]

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