To:
Jeanne Collins, Amy Mellencamp, Henri Sparks, Linda Walsleban
From: Dawn Moskowitz & Peter Garang Deng
Date: October 16, 2012
Parents for Change Public Action Meeting:
Monday, November 12th, 7-8:30pm, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Burlington
The public action meeting is an important opportunity for the Burlington New American Parents for
Change leaders to demonstrate their leadership publicly. (Note: Voices, working with Vermont
Interfaith Action, is supporting the development of Parents for Change networks representing
marginalized families in Burlington and Winooski. This is the central role of our independent
community-based organizing work to support capacity-building and leadership through the Partnership
for Change). At the public action meeting, Parents for Change leaders formally initiate working
collaboratively with school leaders to take next steps to improve student placement and support. They
present specific, viable solutions to work with the school to achieve. Most, if not all, of these
improvements, are areas the schools are currently working on and provide great opportunities to
collaborate in new ways.
At the public action meeting, the New American Parents for Change leaders will ask you to work with
them to design and implement specific improvements they have identified. The parent leaders will
share their research and progress and their willingness to work together.
We anticipate more than 100 people will attend the meeting, with at least 50 people coming from the
New American communities. This is a public meeting – teachers, staff, parents, students , Partnership
for Change leaders, VIA congregations and the broader public are invited. The media will be invited as
well.
A key goal of this meeting is for New American parent leaders and school leaders to confirm their
commitment to working together to make these improvements. This reflects a new level of capacitybuilding and leadership within the New American community and is indicative of the type of
engagement Parents for Change hopes to foster as a partner in the Partnership for Change. The next
step after the meeting will be to clearly identify the individuals responsible within the schools,
Partnership for Change, and the New American communities to move each item forward to completion
and establish the process to work together. We see clear links between these improvements, and the
advancement of broader student-centered learning goals.
Difference from Prior Meetings:
This is different than presenting a list of concerns or requests for school leaders to address. The public
action meeting focuses on one issue that Burlington New American Parents for Change leaders have
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identified as both very important and solvable in the short-term. The issue of student placement was
selected based on a gap that families and students are experiencing between student needs and the
current situation. The parent leaders research the issue so that they understand how things work now
and identify ways to address the gap.
To support parent leaders to effectively make change, we have worked with them to:
(1) Prioritize: Pick one issue that is shared across New American groups as their first issue. We
provided support and training to help parent leaders understand why to start with one issue,
and how to work together to pick an issue that is both important and solvable in the short term.
(2) Conduct Research: Identify volunteer research leaders (5-8) from among the Burundian,
Bhutanese Nepali, Somali, Somali Bantu leaders in each community (30+) to better understand
the issue. We were also able to recruit a volunteer Vietnamese parent leader during the
research phase. We supported research leaders to learn how and why to do research. We
provided training to parents on how to prepare for the research meeting, design an agenda,
prepare questions, and run a meeting. At each research meeting, parent leaders asked who
else they should meet with to learn more. This has helped parent leaders to understand all the
work that is currently being done related to this issue, to develop positive relationships with
school staff and hear ideas and potential solutions from staff. Research meetings were held
with:
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Linda Walsleban (June)
Research Leaders Report back to the Community Leaders (July)
Jill Jacobelli (August)
Patty Wesley and Henri Sparks (September)
New American Community Meetings to Share Research and Solutions (September)
(3) Identify Solutions and Commit to Work Together: The public action meeting is designed to
report on progress and take action to move forward together. All of the solutions are presented
to you as “questions.”
(4) Work Together and Evaluate Progress: After the public meeting, we support bringing together
New American leaders and school staff responsible for implementation to design and implement
each of the solutions. Quarterly meetings will also be established to review progress together.
New American leaders will continue to report out on progress at New American community
meetings.
Design of the Public Action Meeting:
The public action meeting is run by the New American leaders. At the meeting, New American leaders:
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Summarize the research they have done
Share stories about the issue: why it is important and how it impacts students
Ask School Leaders to work together with them on the specific solutions they have identified
through research
The meeting is very structured. It is not a forum.
Time for School Leaders to Respond
You will initially be asked for a “Yes” or “No” response and then will have about 3 minutes to elaborate.
We shared all of the questions with you, and we will work with you to ensure each question is directed
to the right person. If appropriate, the types of things you may want to consider including in your
response are:
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Commitment to working together on the issue
A few ways that you would like to work toward this solution (or are working toward the
solution)
A next step you’d like to take toward working together
Identified Solutions/Questions You Will Be Asked:
NOTE: Questions have been modified slightly based on clarifications that came out of responses from
Amy and Henri
1)
Are you willing to work with us to re-design the intake process for ELL students to have a
new system in place by the end of this school year that gathers more information about
the students’ educational background and interests?

2)
Explanation/Example: The requested solution is to gather more information about each
student’s educational background (schooling, gaps, subjects taken, years of instruction,
student interests – so they can connect to clubs and activities, type of formal/informal
education, student goals) and modify the intake process. New American Parent and
Student Leaders would like to work with ELL teachers to help design a new intake
questionnaire, translated into multiple languages and to improve the intake process for
how and when the information is gathered (possibly gather more information from the
family prior to a meeting, have a 3-month follow-up/check-in with students). To move
this forward, it will be important to identify the school staff/team to work with the New
American leaders.
Will you commit to working with us to develop an “Introduction to Burlington Schools” to
provide clear information about how the American school system works to be ready before
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the beginning of the next school year?

Explanation/Example: The requested solution focuses on providing an Introduction to
American Schools - a 101. This could be a “toolkit” that could include very basic,
accessible written materials with graphics and translations, video, and live presentations
done in and out of school (possibly at/by the VNA Family Room, Boys & Girls Club, King
Street, AALV, Refugee Resettlement etc). There are lots of materials available that a
working group could use to move this forward, including reviewing what we currently
have. Here is an example of an existing resource (which may be in use through
IRC/Refugee Resettlement or our schools in some ways, but not consistently or
systemically yet):
http://www.brycs.org/documents/upload/Educational-Handbook-English.pdf
Some of this work has been in progress already through Linda, Nijaza, Patty, Nancy Knox
and Kathy Mathis. Some elementary school based family-school partnership teams may
also be working on this.
3)
Can you work with us to identify common questions and create a comprehensive training
program for all Multi-lingual liaisons to be in place by July 2013 so that they are more
informed about K-12 school and summer programs and school policies and can better
assist families?
 Explanation/Example: The requested solution starts with identifying common questions
currently being asked by parents to multilingual liaisons. Some questions include:
requests for recommendations for an SES/Tutor, assistance understanding the options
and picking the right afterschool or summer school program for a student. We believe
this work is already underway under Nijaza, Linda and Henri’s leadership. The next step
may just be to work with New American leaders to gather questions.
4)
Will you commit to working together to develop new communication tools and a policy
review by this spring to: more clearly explain student’s skill level (related to high school,
college and career-readiness) and to make sure that parents are quickly informed if there is
an academic or behavioral issue at school?
 Explanation/Example: There are two communications-related solutions requested:
o Providing a new type of report – a graphic representation of student progress
compared to grade level expectations with some benchmarks for high school
readiness and college/career readiness. Parent leaders know from Linda that a
new type of report card has been piloted. A next step on this would be for New
American leaders to be working as part of the team to comment, refine and
implement this new type of visual report. This is a very important tool to help
parents understand student progress. It is a gateway to understanding the time
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and effort required to become college-ready, as well as defining the pathways
to reach college by accelerating learning through more intensive work after
school, weekends and summers or extending learning in transitional programs
beyond high school. Here is an example of a graphic:
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12
College-Ready
10
Student’s
Grade
Level in
School
High School -Ready
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Grade Level
Expectations
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Students Level
4
2
0
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Student’s Age
o
5)
Providing a review of current policy/process to inform New American families if
there is a behavior or academic issue. This would include working with families
to explain and possibly re-define what triggers communication (e.g. student
being sent out of class, missed homework assignments) and how to make sure
communication happens and parent receives and understands it and how to
work with the school to address it. This may be linked to work that Henri is
already doing.
Will you agree to meet with us quarterly to review progress and effectiveness of these
requests?
Preparation for Public Action Meeting
We are happy to answer any questions you have so that you are clear about the purpose and format of
the public action meeting. We think this is an exciting opportunity for the New American parent leaders
and the school leaders to publicly affirm the partnership and continue to take positive, collaborative,
concrete steps to design and implement some changes to improve student placement.
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