FRC Spotlight: Lowell center connects with families

Collaboration, awareness keep out-of-the-way FRC buzzing

The Lowell Elementary Family Resource Center may not be right through the front doors, but if you follow the signs and arrows around some corners and up some stairs, you’ll eventually find Kirstin Hill.

The FRC isn’t a large room, though the school’s Flagship program has an impressive amount of material stacked on shelves all the way up one side of the office.

A couch and a desk fill up the rest of the space where Hill, the school’s FRC specialist, works to increase parent involvement and collaboration.

Despite the tucked-away location, Hill has no trouble coming up with examples of activities parents get involved with at the school. Just at the beginning of December the FRC hosted a Families First program: “Helping Kids Manage Their Emotions”. More program topics, like “Introduction to Positive Discipline”, keep parents interested.

Aside from planning family and parent events, the Lowell FRC stays busy with daily duties as well. While Hill discusses the relationship with Families First, two students walk into the office, one in need of socks and the other looking for a winter coat to replace her autumn jacket. School staff and the students knew the items would be available through the FRC, and it’s awareness and collaboration Hill says is are important to the Center.

A relationship with the PTA, the teachers and staff and individual parents keeps even a tucked-away office busy.

“I feel like it’s important to work with the existing organizations — like the PTA. We kind of work toward the same things,” said Hill.

FRC Spotlight

Family Connection Center starts at Rattlesnake
Funding always ebbs and flows in education, and extra services like Family Resource Centers can fall on the chopping block faster than curriculum-related costs. But one MCPS school has found a way to keep their former FRC running even after a big loss in funding.

The FRC at Rattlesnake Elementary was funded about 50 percent by the PTA and 50 percent through a grant for an AmeriCorps member through WORD.

Last year, WORD did not renew the grant that funded a staff person for the center. However, the Rattlesnake PTA still wanted to offer their funding to the office.

This year, the renamed Family Connection Center is staffed part-time by the former AmeriCorps member Tracy Ursey and partly by four University of Montana students and one Rattlesnake parent.

Ursey found the students through a volunteer fair at the university and one is a Campus Corps member.

“It’s kind of exciting to have the students here,” says Ursey. “They enjoy working with the families and the kids, and we have some new energy around the office.”

Ursey said the FCC is nearly fully staffed, with just about an hour discrepancy on Thursday afternoons.

Through the support of the PTA and some parent and community volunteers, Rattlesnake can still offer students and families great resources while breaking out of the grant or Title I funding mold.