Palmer Collaborative School Committee (CSC) Meetings
What is a Collaborative School Committee?
The Collaborative School Committee (CSC) brings together families, staff and community members to create and implement a plan to promote high achievement within a school. This committee meets on a quarterly basis throughout the school year and is an opportunity for key stakeholders to have a voice at Palmer.
Colorado law requires all schools to have a CSC to increase the amount of accountability and family involvement in our schools.
What are the CSC’s responsibilities?
Every school is required by state statute to have a School Accountability Committee (SAC), which are known as CSCs in Denver. The CSC is responsible for:
- Providing guidance, evaluation, and recommendations to the Principal and/or the Instructional Superintendent about:
- Spending priorities
- Preparing a school’s Unified Improvement Plan (and school priority improvement and turnaround plan, if required)
- Discussing whether school leadership, personnel, and infrastructure are advancing implementation of the public school’s improvement plan (or priority improvement or turnaround plan, whichever is applicable); discussing any other progress pertinent to the public school’s accreditation contract with the Board
- Principal development plans and evaluations
- Providing input for principal evaluations as it relates to the CSC
- Increasing family engagement, especially ensuring that parents represent the diversity of the student body (including race, free/reduced lunch, limited English proficiency, and disability–as described by Colorado law (.pdf). The committee’s activities to increase parent engagement must include, but need not be limited to:
- Publicizing opportunities for parents to serve on the CSC, ensuring the diversity of parents on the CSC reflects the diversity of the school’s population.
- Helping the school implement the DPS family engagement policy (such as that outlined by the Family Empowerment Team)
- Helping school personnel increase parents’ engagement with teachers, including (not not limited to) parents’ engagement in creating students’ READ Plans, Individual Career and Academic Plans (ICAP), and habitual truancy prevention plans.
The CSC does NOT:
- Participate in the day-to-day operations of the school;
- Involve itself in issues relating to individuals (staff, students, or parents) within the school
- Involve itself in personnel issues (the School Personnel Committee will stand alone according to the current DPS/DCTA contract)
- Advocate for their own perspective, rather than for the greater good of the school
During CSC meetings we discuss:
- School funding
- School-wide programming
- School policies
- Unified Improvement Plan (UIP)
- And more!
Meeting Minutes
