Our school serves many students with special needs. How have Network members adapted their partnership programs for families of students with special needs?
Mavis Sanders, the Network’s Assistant Director, met with two schools in Baltimore, MD that serve students with special needs and their families. The goal was to uncover issues and strategies that schools should consider when developing comprehensive partnership programs that meet the needs of all students and families. Through interviews, observations, and reviewing school documents, Dr. Sanders found that these schools were able to create successful partnerships with families by 1) Creating avenues for communication School-home communications contained important information and encouraged parental input (important for meeting the challenge for two-way communication). 2) Opening doors for decision making Schools solicited parents’ ideas and opinions and encouraged them to take an active role in assessing the treatment needs of their children. 3) Promoting pathways for student success. School-to-home and home-to-school communications and parental involvement in decision making were lin
