Members of the team at Northern Elementary School (Fayette County) after they were honored as a Family Friendly School by the Prichard Committee. Photo submitted by Becky Erwin
Northern Elementary (Fayette County) began its work to pursue the Prichard Committee’s Family Friendly School Certificate in Fall 2024. This work was initiated by our Local Leadership Team, composed of teachers, administrators, community partners, and grant coordinators.
The two lead coordinators were Becky Erwin and Yvonne O’Neill. In the 2025-2026 school year, Becky Erwin serves as an intervention teacher and Yvonne O’Neill serves as the Math Achievement Fund (MAF) Math Coach. Both educators have previously been classroom teachers in multiple grade levels at the school. Together, these teachers collaborate as co-coordinators for the Family and Community Engagement Team (FACE), Title I, and Family Friendly Schools certification for Northern Elementary.
Our school committed to work on this initiative because it closely aligned to our core value of community and our commitment to fostering a more family friendly school. When Yvonne O’Neill and I took over the roles of Title I and FACE coordinator a few years ago, we began implementing changes to better meet the needs of our families.
Part of the change process included increasing family engagement and providing opportunities for families to give feedback about the work being done at Northern. A change that has significantly impacted this process for hearing from our families was to implement family exit slips during Title I Nights that allowed families to give their input on what parts of the event they enjoyed, how we could improve, and suggestions of things they would like to see in future Title I nights. These exit slip surveys are translated in our families’ top native languages to minimize the language barrier in hearing their voice. Much of the feedback indicated that we had several systems in place already that benefitted our families, but we could now continue to grow to make Northern a better school. For example, we have always hosted multiple family nights each year to encourage families to attend school events and learn about their children’s school day. Through this process, however, we learned that families like varied days and times for these events, instead of consistent schedules, so we began offering our events on different days of the week and implemented morning events as well. Inspired by our work with the Family Friendly process, we have extended these survey questions to include how the families would like to participate in the school, such as supporting future Title nights or in any other capacity that allows them to become more involved. These questions have helped us learn our families’ strengths and have inspired new ideas of how families can be engaged. For example, this survey has led to being able to capitalize on our families’ language abilities to support busy events, such as Back to School, in which parents help translate directions for other families.
The Family Friendly Schools Initiative helped give us a structure for identifying our strengths and areas for improvement. The organization of the initiative helped us begin by looking at the categories of family engagement and finding areas that needed growth. The self-assessment rubric completed by our team members helped us base our decisions in data to determine our strengths and areas for growth. Following the assessment results, we met with our principal, Local Leadership Team committee members, staff and students to get input on what we wanted to focus on and set forth to fill in the gaps we saw. The success of this initiative is a testament to the effort of our core team: Principal Dr. Rachel Butler, Family Resource Coordinator Nydia Higgins, FACE Liaison Carolina Brock, and KCSI Grant Coordinator Carla Mack.
As stated above, when we started our family engagement work, we were not aware of the certification process. Last year, our Family District Community Liaison discussed the process and noted how it aligned with our current goals as a school. In an effort to continue supporting our families and improving family engagement, we signed up for the Family Friendly Schools Initiative and learned about the goals and the process involved in earning the certification.
Initially, the certification process was a bit confusing and hard to navigate as aspects of the application were locked until certain dates and some links did not work. Despite these challenges, the Prichard Committee was highly supportive and responsive to any of our questions. New systems in the process were put into place this year to make the steps of certification less confusing and easier to manage. For example, there is now an E-Portfolio with each section pre-set with the components and evidence necessary to complete the application. This E-Portfolio provided structure to managing evidence and a clear way to present it to the evaluators.
While we did not have to change anything we were already doing to meet the requirements of the certification, we did modify some of our initiatives to be more intentional in their implementation. For example, we already had committees in place, but we did not always have a good mix of participants that represented our community or the student voice needed for effective change and growth. Small changes inspired by the criteria of the certification process reaped much larger rewards with family engagement and growth.
Our comprehensive outreach to community partners, driven by parent requests, has greatly deepened our capacity to meet family needs. For example, we implemented a new after-school program after parents requested support for childcare and enrichment. Partnerships have also provided direct support for things like funds to purchase meat, sides and kitchen staples for delivered meal kits, and volunteers to pack the kits and deliver them to our families. Other partnerships have served as tutors and providers of social-emotional support for our students. Furthermore, other partnerships have helped improve our physical space, transforming it into a more welcoming community environment.
Gaining gold certification is an honor and an acknowledgment of all the hard work and processes we have put in place to truly make Northern Elementary a community school. Our goal is to continue this work to foster authentic partnerships between our school, families, and community. Our team will keep this work alive by continuing to build on what we have learned and the work we have done already. We will increase our connections with community partners and families and use the Family Friendly Assessment to guide our work, identify areas for improvement, and continue to be intentional about having families involved in decision-making and community-building at our school. Northern Elementary has changed in so many positive ways as a result of being family friendly. We will continue this work and plan to see even more positive changes and continuous growth for a better Northern community.
Family Friendly Schools Certification is awarded by the Prichard Committee after applications are reviewed and scored by a working group of families, educators and community organizations. The group is focused on increasing open communication, learning opportunities and shared decision-making power across the Kentucky education system.
For more details on the Family Friendly Schools Certification, visit the Prichard Committee’s Family Engagement website.
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