We help people
Parent & Citizen Partner Program
SOSNOLA's Parent & Community Partner Program is designed for citizens to work in partnership with parents and residents to help shape and advance public education policies that promote the redesign and rebuilding of schools, so that they include and be driven by community and educational needs.
Our goals for the Parent & Community Partner Program include hosting semi-monthly workshops this fall during the school year to provide parents, neighbors, students and school administrators an opportunity to candidly discuss their concerns, needs, and existing barriers to high performance in struggling schools. SOSNOLA also plans to organize town hall meetings that allow parents and community members a platform to articulate their concerns and visions for public schools. In addition, we are expanding our Connect2Educate networking event to include parents and teachers so that everyone is informed of the wide array of services, resources and programming options available to students.
Created to help engage and empower community members to public school reform, SOSNOLA is making it easy for you to be a part of creating a better public education system in New Orleans. Please sign up by clicking here and sending us your completed Parent & Citizen Partner Profile or email us for more information.
Our Schools. Our Future. Our Plans.
The School Facilities Master Plan (SFMP) is a comprehensive city plan developed by the Recovery School District (RSD) and Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) to determine the future of each and every New Orleans public school site and facility regarding renovations and construction. The RSD and OPSB worked on the blueprint for a year-and-a-half before making the guide available to the community for a public comment period, following which the community’s concerns were taken into consideration and final decisions were made.
Save Our Schools New Orleans brought over 150 parents and community members to a series of 15 community meetings that connected education advocacy organizations with SFMP planners. We fought to ensure community engagement in the planning process by successfully campaigning to extend the SFMP comment period when Hurricane Gustav forced a citywide evacuation during the originally proposed comment period. SOSNOLA lobbied and presented OSPB with a 500-signature petition resulting in a 15-day extension of the public comment period.
SOSNOLA works to inform students, parents, school leaders, and community members about the SFMP. Our work with the Hollygrove community and Paul L. Dunbar Redevelopment Collaborative exemplifies how we coordinate, inform, and mobilize communities to ensure engagement in public education decision making. In addition, our Through the Lens of New Orleans Youth project served to connect youth to long-term planning and involvement in the School Facilities Master Plan.
The Education Advocate Communication Circle
The Circle, proposed by Save Our Schools New Orleans, illuminates and connects education centered nonprofit organizations to one another. Improving New Orleans public schools is beyond the capacity of a few individuals or organizations, therefore effectiveness and efficiency is paramount. SOSNOLA advances effectiveness of local education advocates by facilitating connections and supporting regular communication among groups that includes information about each organization’s focus, programs and projects. The goals of the Education Advocate Communication Circle are to increase efficiency, eliminate duplication, maximize resources and identify opportunities for partnerships in order to promote each individual organization’s mission to improve schools in New Orleans.
We work toward this by frequently communicating with other public school advocates, attending most public education-related forums and meetings, and by participating in community-based partnerships and projects.
For example, SOSNOLA serves as a parent voice in many important community meetings regarding access to better schools, and creates summaries of these meetings for distribution to parents and community members via our newsletter, website, and workshops. To elevate public school issues, we serve as part of the City Master Plan Advisory Group, which guides the long-term physical development of New Orleans; and we participate in Tulane’s Cowen Institute’s Forum, which discusses new models for higher education in public school systems. In addition, SOSNOLA collaborates with New Orleans Parent Organizing Network to ensure efficient school data collection and quality control of information for our detailed database of New Orleans public schools in the Close-Ups web portal.
