Student/Family/School Compact

Families – Please read this compact with your child. Have both you and your child sign the compact and return it to the AM classroom teacher.

A compact is a written agreement that outlines how students, parents and teachers will work together to accomplish great things for our children in school and in life. At Green Lake, this is what we agree to in order to do our best and work well together!

Student Pledge

I pledge to:

• Come to class ready to learn, work hard and do my best
• Be safe, kind, helpful and responsible
• Be a self-manager – solve problems and practice making good decisions
• Be present and engaged in classes
• Read every day

Family Pledge

I/We pledge to:

• Ensure that my child attends school every day and is on time
• Help my child get enough sleep on school nights
• Provide a quiet time and place for schoolwork
• Read to my child and encourage my child to read daily
• Read weekly newsletters from the principal and emails from educators
• Participate in school activities whenever possible.
• Attend family/teacher conferences.
• Communicate with school staff about my child’s progress and seek help if my child is not meeting grade level academic standards or behavior expectations

School Pledge

We pledge to:

• Involve families in decision making and improving our school community.
• Provide a safe, warm and caring learning environment.
• Plan instruction that is engaging and appropriately challenging to students.
• Have high expectations of our students, and communicate these expectations clearly so that students and families see growth.
• Use the RULER and Second Step approach to provide a safe social/learning environment.
• Communicate regularly with families about student progress.
• Work as a team with other school staff to design excellent instruction and support students and families.

Green Lake Elementary School embraces the Seattle Public Schools’ commitment to family involvement as a key to academic success. In order to facilitate this, the school community has developed the following plan.

Green Lake Elementary School will meet statutory requirements by:

• Schoolwide Family/School compact translated into our five major languages (Amharic, Tigrinya, Vietnamese, Spanish, Somali).  Compacts are sent to families in September. We maintain family communication through:
• Weekly family newsletter sent by the principal on Fridays in all major languages
• Weekly family newsletters from teachers
• Parent Teacher Association (PTA) website
• Informational displays in school hallways regarding volunteer opportunities, after school programs, special events, PTA news, and volunteer recognition.
• Monthly PTA meetings and special presentations (interpreted)
• Spanish Family connection meetings offered weekly
• A Volunteer coordinator on staff
• A highly professional staff of bilingual instructional assistants who maintain regular contact with families by phone and face to face interactions

Green Lake will involve families in the development and revision of the school’s family involvement plan by:

Soliciting family comment, through scheduled meetings where the involvement plan is on the agenda. (PTA meetings, Building Leadership Team meetings, and others as appropriate)

Green Lake  will involve families in the process of school review and improvement by:

• Membership on the Building Leadership Team where major issues of educational policy and practice are decided around Comprehensive-School Improvement Plan (CSIP), budget, and professional development
• Soliciting input at family events throughout the year
• Green Lake Elementary meeting outlining the Title 1 program requirements and the rights of families will be held early in the fall.  This evening meeting is widely publicized by classroom announcements, translated flyers, newsletters and fliers.
• Green Lake will hold regularly scheduled family – teacher conferences.
• Teachers hold Family Connections meetings with individual families in September.
• November academic conferences which include soliciting families’ perspectives on their children

Green Lake will provide written reports of scores to families by:

• Distribution of reading and math formative and summative assessment data
• All teaching staff at Green Lake Elementary School are Highly Qualified.
• All new hires must meet Title 1 requirements.

Activities by Green Lake Elementary School to help parents understand academic requirements include:

• Meetings on how to read and interpret the report card
• Translated reports on student progress in addition to the report card
• Green Lake’s Title 1 team provides on-going training and support to all staff in communicating with parents and engaging them as equal partners in their child’s education.

In addition to all the activities listed above, Green Lake Elementary School has developed the following opportunities for parent involvement in the school.

• Parents serve as volunteers throughout the school (tutors, library helpers, chaperones, facilitators of after school programs, special events coordinators).
• Parent/Family All school programs
• Language Affinity Group meetings
• Weekly all school assemblies focused on heritage and cultural pride months
• MLK and Black Lives Matters celebrations
• Multicultural  and Literacy Celebration Night
• Language support for families whose home language is not English.  This includes interpretation of conferences, student intervention team meetings, Individualized Education Plan(IEP) meetings, and general conferences.
• School Relations Assistant, Family School Advocate, Black Family Literacy Connector, and counselor who help families with material needs and tracks families whose children are at risk of truancy or poor academic performance
• Parent involvement and leadership on the Building Leadership Team (BLT), PTA executive board. Parents are also represented on the playground supervision and before and after school programs.

This plan is available in the front office. Copies are available through the PTA, Volunteer coordinator, Title 1 team, principal, and assistant principals.

Green Lake Elementary School has a strong commitment to parent involvement. With a diverse linguistic, socio-economic, racial, cultural, and ethnic community, the school strives to welcome, reach out to, and include all families as equal partners.