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Prepping principals to engage their communities
The District’s own principal development program, Academy for Leadership in Philadelphia Schools (ALPS), is one District program with a clear focus on the importance of community engagement as part of effective school leadership.
ALPS, an intensive training program which involves a principal residency, graduates 15 principal candidates a year and also provides seminars and supports for the District’s 30 first-year and 30 second-year principals. A November open house to recruit candidates for next year’s ALPS class drew over 200 prospects.
The ALPS training program has a “core strand” devoted to family and community engagement.
“We realized this was an area – fitting in and understanding a community, cultural competencies – that universities don’t train well enough for,” said Tomas Hanna, head of human resources for the School District, who organized the first ALPS program three years ago.
“Building Community Relationships” is one of the nine “domains of leadership” highlighted in the principal training, observed Karen Kolsky, executive director for ALPS. She added, “All the current residents have to show proficiency in the domain.”
The Academy runs seminars on the topic throughout the year and has developed a set of “essential questions” to help its residents focus on the topic – questions such as “What is the relationship between family engagement and student achievement?” and “How do we support parents and community members in being successful partners with the schools?”
Seminars are led by outside experts like Steve Honeyman of the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project, and provide parent voices on what principals need from parents and vice versa, as well as looking at what kinds of infrastructure principals need to support community engagement.
Honeyman pointed to neighborhood walks as one of the tools they discuss to help prospective principals understand “how to grasp community needs.”
Kolsky said she believes the training of the ALPS residents is having a broader impact on the entire District. “They go back and they share their learning with their host principal,” she noted. “Quite often the residents will do staff development with the teachers.”
The program
is supported by the Broad Foundation in
partnership with Lehigh University and
the University of Pennsylvania.