The Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO) has published a flyer with 25 ideas about “How to Use the $500 Parent Involvement Funding to increase the diversity of your School Council”.

Their ideas are great.  We often have questions from school councils looking for ways to spend their annual $500 grant money for parent involvement. Please share the OCISO flyer with your school council.  Thank you, OCISO for the ideas!

Great News!!

OCASC just found out today that our joint application with OCISO (the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization)  for a PRO Grant  has been accepted.

OCASC’s project “Parent Engagement: Strategies and Resources for Parents and Schools” aims to address parent involvement barriers specific to individual schools, working both with parents and with school staff to break down barriers and encourage parent involvement.  We look forward to working with school councils, school staff, and community groups to develop a range of strategies and to create on-line resources for both parents and staff regarding parent involvement in the school.

At the January OCASC meeting our project team – Norah Vollmer, Wali Farah, Heather Wilson and Nihan Kavaslar – made a presentation to the Assembly about the project.  A discussion followed based on a set of four questions about parent involvement –  what works, what doesn’t, and what can be improved at your school.  The PowerPoint presentation is available to view or download and use at your own school council.  The questionnaire with the four questions is also available as either a Word document or a pdf file and makes a great basis for a discussion at your school council.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact us.  We would be happy to talk with your school council.

PRO Grants – Parents Reaching Out Grants – are issued by the Ministry of Education for projects that will increase parent involvement, in particular those that will get more parents involved.