Photo shows a group of dozens of people posing for a large group shot in front of a school building, most of whom are wearing blue shirts

The team with Frankfort Independent Schools. Photo provided by Joe Rogers

My name is Joe Rogers, and I am the principal of Frankfort High School. We are part of a small, independent district in the Commonwealth’s capital. As a school located in the heart of the community, family involvement and partnership have long been important to our culture and identity. We thrive when we leverage family and community connections to ensure we are serving the unique needs of all of our students. We are always looking for ways to hone our practice, so when we learned about the Family Friendly Certificate program through the Prichard Committee four years ago, we decided to give it a try.

As a whole, our district believes the work of engaging our families is never-ending. While we can work to improve, we will never truly be “finished.” The Family Friendly Certification was a natural next step for us to work both as a district and two individual schools celebrate what we were doing and find ways to improve. I took over that work at the high school level and worked with our pre-K-8 school principal and chief academic officer for the district to complete our first application.

Our foundation has always been to connect to the community in ways that will help us all grow. We have always worked to ensure all families have a voice. Once we were made aware of the program and certification by our superintendent, we began using it as a reflection and self-assessment opportunity. Our process began with cataloging the work we were already doing. It provided us with a helpful framework to see where we were doing well and find blind spots to address that would help us more effectively and equitably serve all of our families.

We began casting a wide net, reaching out to our teachers, families, and community partners to collect evidence of our commitment to family engagement in the areas required for certification. This was a great process to bring our attention to what it meant to serve all families with fresh eyes. We were able to find some important areas for growth to target our thinking, partnership, and work.

In our first year, the hardest part of the certification process was making decisions about what work to include and how to ensure we had evidence and pathways for growth in creating a true partnership with all stakeholders. Over the past four years, the process has been streamlined to not only be less cumbersome for applying schools, but also create a showcase for the family-friendly work being done. The implementation of an e-portfolio system means that the application now doubles as a family-friendly website for the school. The application walks schools through the creation of an easily shareable digital portfolio that we can showcase for all stakeholders if certification is achieved. We have used the resulting website to highlight our growth and continued commitment to family engagement.

The greatest benefit the certification process has given to us is the lens through which to view our continued work. The certification requirements didn’t necessarily require us to change what we were doing. I would say our school, like most others, already had a very strong foundation of family-friendly practices. Teachers, administrators, students, and parents were working together regularly to make sure we were the school we wanted to be. But when we began the certification process, we began to look at all of that work in a new light. We found a lot of things to celebrate that we were taking for granted. It was a great process to make sure we could celebrate the people and processes that make us work. We also identified blind spots that, with some focus, helped us better understand and serve our families.

Overall, the process has helped shift our thinking. As a district, we now work on the application together after meeting with individual school teams. We expand partnerships every year and still find unique ways to tweak what we do for kids, families, and the community. Over the past four years, it has become an important part of our identity. Instead of something that happens “when it’s time to apply,” we now regularly meet with stakeholders, collect artists, and think about what we do and how we do it through a family-friendly lens. And every year we find new things to get excited about. Our school has become more reflective and aware of what we need to do for our stakeholders. The family-friendly process gives us the tools and framework to bring the right people to the table and continue to help Frankfort Independent Schools thrive.

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.