This article highlights several strategies that are crucial for successful school-community relations: (1) know your audience and build a relationship with them; (2) identify key influential constituents; (3) make budget information available and interesting; and (4) ask instead of tell. (LMI)

Describes how the Magwood Public Library (Cook County, Illinois) successfully passed a $6.5 million tax referendum. Recommends showing the need for expansion, hiring an architectural firm to conduct a feasibility study, detailing the costs, securing community support, emphasizing cost effectiveness, and promoting the proposal. (AEF)

Leisure time planning for aging adults with mental retardation is still in its early stages. The article discusses related research, noting patterns of social support and interaction, leisure involvement, leisure related programs, and community integration. The challenge for the future will be to meet individual leisure needs with limited…

Presents six position statements for developing a multicultural arts curriculum. Suggests strategies for implementing curricula and resources for gathering community information. Provides examples of implementation, including a sample interview to use with artists and sample questions to ask students when analyzing works of art. (KM)

The history of the Caswell County (North Carolina) Training School, a segregated African-American school, shows that the community and school supported each other in ways that do not fit current definitions of parent involvement. Adopting some of the methods of the Caswell School might help today's African-American parents and schools improve…

Describes one inner-city school district's struggles with old buildings and community apathy that has caused no school funding issues to be passed in two decades. Showing the school district's ability to give value back to the neighborhood is considered an important element in changing public opinion. (GR)

Describes the efforts of two teachers to construct a pond and woods on school grounds. The teachers used specialized student teams for working on a wetland study and the building project. An advisory committee including teachers, the principal, and the custodian worked through maintenance issues. Relates teaching surprises associated with the…

Analyzes two paths to creating a broad community support network to enhance urban education reform. The first is a mayoral path, exemplified by Boston, in which the mayor assumes political and fiscal responsibility for school reform. The second is a corporate path, exemplified by Pittsburgh in the 1980s, in which the private sector establishes a…

This paper has two purposes. The first purpose is to develop a better understanding of the process of starting an after-school program for Japanese heritage language learners. The second purpose is to develop a better understanding of parents' expectations of their children's heritage language education. Interviews with two Japanese mothers whose…

This qualitative study explored 8th-grade students' responses to hearing stories about the lived experience of violence. A convenience sample of 13 students attending health education classes at a public middle school was used. After hearing each story, students answered a series of questions using the process of free writing. Free writing is a…

The implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation in 2001 exemplifies extreme reaction to an escalating public unrest with educational systems over the past several decades of "educational reform." Effective public relations and communication with stakeholders is threatened during this time of increased public…

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) created the Relocation Program in 1952 to sever Indian federal trust status and impose Euro-American values on Indians all under the guise of benevolence. Led from reservations to urban areas, Indians found the problems of their reservations in their new locations: few employment opportunities, poor housing…

A school environment analysis is a comprehensive set of techniques that assess productivity and satisfaction of both students and staff. While the means to school environment assessment are not particularly complicated or time consuming, the analysis must be conducted in a comprehensive and systematic fashion, using a variety of types of data.…

This workbook offers information about building community support for educational reform, particularly for improving mathematics and science education. Following an introductory chapter that explains the need for community support, the second chapter offers step-by-step suggestions for bringing the community together, some of which are identifying…

There have been well over 200 Presidentially declared disasters in the United States in the past 5 years. No state has been spared. The costs associated with these events are staggering. Communities can take responsibility for alleviating the impact of natural disasters to ensure citizen safety, prevent damage to facilities, prevent delays of…