Coalition Meetings
Vibrant Schools Tacoma has coalition meetings every other month at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center from 4:00-6:00 p.m. to inform our base surrounding activity happening within our school district. This is also a wonderful opportunity to receive community input from our diverse coalition. Every meeting has a guest speaker and area of focus. Below are highlights of guest speakers and areas of interest.
April 16th
Community Partnerships delivered by Amanda Scott-Thomas & New Technology for TPS delivered by Michael Farmer
Amanda Scott-Thomas, Director of Community Partnerships, Academic Equity & Achievement, shared the importance of cultivating strong and healthy community partnerships. She spoke of her dedication to the youth growing up in this community and what we can do collectively to help them succeed.
Michael Farmer, Director of Instructional Technology and Tacoma Virtual Learning, spent time sharing about the new technology TPS has just launched that will help parents, students, and teachers. As Vibrant Schools has stressed the importance of Transparency within the school district Michael has put on quarterly meeting for parents and does workshops for teachers to aid them in navigating this new technology to better serve their youth. If you would like to be a part of his ongoing meetings, please contact him at: [email protected].
June 18th
Academic Acceleration: What it meant for Federal Way and what it could mean for Tacoma School District
Erin Jones, Director of Equity and Achievement at the Federal Way School District, came to guest speak at our Vibrant Schools Coalition Meeting. Earlier in 2013, Mrs. Jones was a recipient of the Champions for Change Award, given by the President of the United States. Her focus and dedication to closing both the Achievement Gap and Opportunity Gap has been recognized on a national level and we were so lucky to have her share her thoughts on Academic Acceleration for Tacoma. It was a mixture of information, such as a 97% success rate in closing the Achievement Gap in her school district and showing that AVID, which has been a platform for the Accelerated Learning model, has aided in this process, to also sharing areas to be wary moving forward. Academic Acceleration is a policy already adopted by Tacoma Public Schools but the implementation is important and from a community perspective, to understand this policy and what we can do to advocate for our youth will be key.
August 6th
Vibrant Schools Tacoma Candidates Forum 2013
Vibrant Schools Tacoma Video (click to watch)
Interested in Lasting Change Within Our Tacoma Community Surrounding Race?
Vibrant Schools hosted our first candidates forum. This was for school board position #1. We had Debbie Winskill and Dexter Gordon come to speak and answer questions for the Tacoma Community. For more on the candidates forum, please go to that page: Vibrant Schools Candidates Forum
October 15th
This meeting was dedicated to policy and educating the coalition using multiple avenues and lenses. We had Liesl Santkuyl (Tacoma Director for STAND for Children), Roz Jenkins (Representative from LEV), Parasa Chanramy (Policy Analyst), Scott Heinze (Tacoma School Board Member), and Janet Stewart (PTA Treasurer). Each representative shared what policies are effecting youth in Tacoma and the importance of educating ourselves on each policy to understand how to best advocate. For more on each organization, please check out the links below:
-League of Education Voters
-Tacoma Council PTA
-Stand for Children Tacoma
-Tacoma Public Schools
January 14, 2014
Vibrant Schools shared our first passing of our continually evolving set of goals for 2014-2016. Key focus areas are on Rigor, Transparency, Culture and Climate in our schools. For this coalition meeting our theme was on Transparency. We invited Michael Farmer, Director of Instructional Technology, to come and guest speak, sharing new technology that is available and ways of communicating better with the public.
March 11, 2014
Vibrant Schools theme was Culture and Climate. Guest speakers were Jennifer Kubista, TPS Director of Student Life, and Greg Benner, Executive Director of the Center for Strong Schools. They discussed the Whole Child Initiative. Also, Roger Chow, TPS Director of Curriculum and Instruction, came to share about the Black Male Learner Project and other projects focusing on Culture and Climate.
