The FACE Forum

Happy September! We hope the school year is off to a great start and that you and your teams are settling in well! We know it's been busy and filled with some added challenges, so THANK YOU for all you're doing! We appreciate you!

In this digital monthly newsletter for school staff and district departments, our Family & Community Engagement (FACE) team shares practical family and community building tips, high-leverage engagement strategies, upcoming family workshops, staff professional development opportunities, district community events, resources, school shoutouts, and more!

Thank you for taking a moment to read our newsletter each month and please feel free to share it with your site/ department teams. While our FACE Forum monthly newsletter is an internal newsletter intended to only be shared with district staff, you are invited to take any applicable parts of the newsletter that may support your families and add to your own site/classroom newsletters and family messaging.

Thank you for all you're doing to engage with and support our San Juan students, families, and community! Our FACE team is here to help you, so please reach out to us at any time!

Have a great September ahead!

The FACE Team

Direct to Teacher Grants San Juan Education Foundation

Parent/Family Hub www.sanjuan.edu/parents

Student Hub www.sanjuan.edu/students

FACE Outreach requests (Face Mobile, mini clinics and more!) https://bit.ly/FACEoutreach

FACE Lending Library of Fun https://bit.ly/FACElendingfun

Staff Digital Resource Library (community/district flyers) https://bit.ly/FACEresource

San Juan Unified Volunteer information www.sanjuan.edu/volunteer

FACE department Intranet! (Field trip forms, volunteer flyers and more!) intranet.sanjuan.edu/face

Community Resources www.sanjuan.edu/communityresources

• Food

• Clothing

• Diapers

• Utilities & Housing

• Social & Recreational

• Academic

• Disability & Special Education

• Employment

• Mental Health

• Refugee, Immigrant & Newcomer Supports

• LGBTQIA+

• Domestic Violence

• and more!

Copy and paste Family Workshop info direct from www.sanjuan.edu/familyed for S'more, Social Media, Talking Points and email messaging! Remember that digital content is translatable and accessible for families-- just posting a flyer without supplemental text is not. Thanks for making your communications clear and accessible!

Our free monthly family education workshops begin in September! Families and staff can scan the QR code or visit www.sanjuan.edu/familyed for details and registration!

Join us for this informative virtual forum to learn about tips and strategies to support home-to-school communication, school attendance awareness, fostering positive learning habits, and navigating tools such as Parent Portal, school websites, and more! There will also be time for a Q&A for assistance from district staff.

This ten-session program is created by parents, for parents, to help support households who are struggling with difficult teen behavior. In this class, participants will learn strategies to help nurture positive home communication, reduce family conflict, and improve difficult teen behavior. Participants will receive a free class handbook. Dinner and child care assistance will be provided.

This workshop is presented in Spanish for families and community members. Explore tips and tools to support a successful start to the school year for your student! Workshop topics include strategies for positive communication with school, school attendance information, tools for parents, and more!

Are you ready to grow your knowledge around family and community engagement, while also earning professional development hours? Our FACE Team's lineup of virtual workshops is now open for registration! The workshops take place on Zoom and are open to all certificated and classified staff members in our district. You can register directly on our FACE course page in the PL Tile (click “FACE” in the "Subjects" section on the Home page).

*Note: If you are a school or department and would like to book a workshop for your entire staff, using your collaborative Thursday time or as part of your Staff Meeting time, please reach out to Amy Rovai Gregory to schedule. (arovai@sanjuan.edu)

Kickstarting a Successful Year of Family Engagement (Section # 57041)

Wednesday, September 4, 3:30-4:30 pm on Zoom

Participants will learn about the importance of family engagement on their campus and how to create effective partnerships with families, both at the elementary and secondary schools. Topics will include ways to provide excellent customer service, create welcoming environments, learn how to effectively communicate with diverse families, and opportunities to share ideas of successful family engagement activities.

Building Relational Trust with Students & Families (Section # 57044)

Wednesday, September 25, 3:30-4:30 pm on Zoom

Meaningful partnerships between home and school can only occur when relationships of trust and respect are established. We will discuss strategies for developing trusting relationships that lead to more effective academic partnerships, including increased attendance and engagement, and will explore how to incorporate trust-building activities into all interactions with families.

Our annual family and community engagement professional development day is back! This full day interactive and engaging training is perfect for site and department individuals or teams who work directly with families and are looking for ways to elevate their engagement and strengthen their partnerships together. If you have School Community Workers, School Community Intervention Specialists, School Community Resource Assistants, Parent Liaisons, or other family engagement focused support staff... this is a fantastic professional learning day for them to attend! Lunch is provided and space fills fast! Register today!

Families and staff from all Special Education programs across San Juan Unified schools are invited to enjoy a casual and fun evening together. Meet the new Special Education Department directors and members of the Community Advisory Committee. Explore district and community resources and connect with other parents, guardians and caregivers!

• Free BBQ dinner

• Disability resources

• Community partners

• Family networking

• Music & Games

• Sensory room for stimulus breaks as needed

• Interpreters

DATE:

Thursday, September 12

4 – 6 p.m.

LOCATION:

Arden Middle School

1640 Watt Ave, Sacramento

FREE! Please register online at https://bit.ly/SpecialEducationCommunitySocial

Questions? Please contact (916) 971-7525 or visit www.sanjuan.edu/specialed

Mark your calendars and share the information with friends and family! The FACE fall Families Matter Conference "Nurturing Growth, Cultivating Community" is coming up on Saturday, October 19 at Arden Middle School from 8:30 am-2:00 pm! This exciting conference has it all-- an inspiring keynote, a variety of informational workshops to choose from, family-fun activities, and a large community resource fair to help you learn all about the helpful resources and supports available to you and our community! And did we mention free food, free childcare, free swag, translation support, and more?! You won't want to miss it! Please see the flyer below for more detailed information and check out our website for registration information! www.sanjuan.edu/familyed

September is Attendance Awareness Month!

It's Attendance Awareness Month! Our Attendance Improvement Program (AIP) colleagues have been hard at work providing supports and resources to help our students and families get back on track with positive attendance habits! Check out their awesome AIP Information Station!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xcQ-tv0vdPImpC39izUaI8n9hKbqlBUi?usp=sharing

Attendance Works is also a fantastic site to access for attendance resources and supports, including this year's attendance awareness campaign! Visit https://www.attendanceworks.org/

Thank you for helping to remind students and families that every day counts and every minute matters!

Research supports a correlation between direct family involvement and student success. Volunteers are a great asset to our school communities and now is a great time to recruit! As a reminder, all volunteers must complete the ONE TIME verification process found here: www.sanjuan.edu/volunteer. If cleared through our most recent online system (starting 2021), they do not have to re-do their application/prints each year. While volunteers can make appointments to be fingerprinted at our district office, we also offer after-hour fingerprinting clinics throughout the year. We are finalizing our after hour fingerprinting clinic schedule for fall and will share the dates and a flyer once finalized. Clinics will begin in September!

Volunteer tips for success!

• Advertise opportunities (and feel free to use the ready-made graphics we've created below!)

• Share mutual expectations

• Support volunteers through process

• August and September is the best time to outreach to TK & Kinder families who are most likely new to our system

• Consider having a table to support volunteer sign ups at kinder testing, orientation, meet and greet, back to school nights!

Please download and read the Volunteer Info Sheet attached as a PDF below and feel free to use the digital graphics we created for website and social media use.

Livescan results can take several weeks and up to months (if delayed). Please encourage families/ community members to complete their applications and fingerprinting as soon as possible so they can participate in Fall activities.

*If volunteers are cleared on our spreadsheet, they DO NOT need to reprint or apply again each year. This is very important to reiterate as multiple duplicate applications slow down our system.

• Wow! 200 field trips already scheduled for the year! Thank you to those of you getting your completed packets in!

• New fillable and printable packets available at intranet.sanjuan.edu/FACE

• A great tool to utilize is our Bus Availability Calendar: 2024-2025 SJUSD Field Trip School Bus Availability. This allows you to check school bus availability (not including charter) and can save you time when selecting dates for school trips.

• Don't forget to check out the new Field Trip Menu of Service below!

When you're ready to submit a field trip request, please send them to fieldtrips@sanjuan.edu. If you have any questions about field trips or need any additional support, please reach out to Emily Red, our field trip facilitator (emily.red@sanjuan.edu).

Looking for some enriching and educational field trip experiences that are local, cost efficient and accessible? Our Field Trip Facilitator, Emily Red, has curated a collection of local, cost efficient and educational field trips that fall within our district's school bus availability hours. Click on the PDF file of the Menu of Service below to explore the hyperlinked field trip opportunities!

Please note, these field trips are in no particular order and will still need additional consideration by the teacher based on the learners who will be participating. It's important that all field trips are inclusive and accessible to all students, taking into account the varied backgrounds, cultures, experiences, abilities, and interests of the learners.

If you have any questions or would like additional information or recommendations, please contact the field trip desk at fieldtrips@sanjuan.edu or via phone at (916)979-8937. We're looking forward to an enriching year ahead for our students, families and school communities!

Do you struggle with getting parents to attend your site events or participate in on-campus family meetings and volunteer opportunities? Are you interested in learning an innovative, highly-effective way to build trusting relationships with your families, while building community with your school neighborhood? Neighborhood Learning Project may be the perfect opportunity for you and your school! The Neighborhood Learning Project partners with interested school staff and neighboring apartment complexes, community centers, parks, libraries and more to identify a space within the school community of our families, where we can bring fun learning opportunities, community resources and partners, caring school staff, and a service learning mindset for our students and their families.

Our FACE Department will fund this opportunity for interested school sites to participate, including the 1-hour training, time card pay, materials and supplies, activities, set up, community partners, and more! It's such a terrific way to engage families and build relationships!

Reach out to Amy Rovai Gregory (arovai@sanjuan.edu) if you are interested in this family and community engagement opportunity!

Are you looking for a way to build trusting, effective, positive relationships with your families beyond the traditional parent-teacher conference? We're excited to launch an incredible opportunity for our San Juan Unified colleagues to become trained on Parent Teacher Home Visits! Parent Teacher Home Visits (PTHV) is a high-impact family engagement strategy designed to build trusting home-school partnerships centered on shared hopes and dreams. Recent studies reveal that PTHV’s model for relational home visits strengthens relationships, shifts mindsets, improves teaching, and bolsters student outcomes.

Through uniquely tailored sessions, teachers emerge with increased understanding of families and respect for their role as children’s first educators. They learn how to build trust with families, and they increase their capacity to better engage students in the classroom. PTHV trainings are interactive, dynamic, and essential to the start of an evidence-based home visit practice.

Reach out to Amy Rovai Gregory (arovai@sanjuan.edu) if you are interested in this training opportunity!

Did you know that FACE works with schools, local business organizations & community partners to create meaningful and sustainable partnerships? We'd love to help you and your team build relationships with the community and partner together to help improve outcomes for students!

Now is a great time to engage with your dedicated community partners and reach out to new potential partners. Share important dates with your partners and discuss what the partners work will look like this year. Include partners in your fall activities and celebrations. Partners love to engage with the families and students that they are serving!

To learn more about partnership opportunities or request assistance with your community partners, reach out to Natalia Mazzi-Aguirre, coordinator of partnerships, volunteers and field trips. natalia.aguirre@sanjuan.edu

Creating connections, inspiring collaboration, and cultivating community, the mission of the San Juan Education Foundation is to harness the combined power of philanthropy and partnership to propel student achievement and enrich the lives of educators. Founded in 1991, the Foundation provides support through Direct-to-Teacher Grants and a broad scholarship portfolio.

Apply for the San Juan Education Foundation’s $5,000 Learning Experience Grant by December 5 and look for updates about grant program changes over the next few months including deadlines for Spring 2025 submissions. Be the first to get updates by signing up for our E-newsletter.

In addition to raising and distributing funds, the San Juan Education Foundation, in collaboration with San Juan Unified, proudly celebrates outstanding alumni who have emerged as distinguished leaders in their respective fields at An Evening with the Stars. On Friday October, 11 at the Citrus Heights Community Center, these four alumni will be inducted into the STARS Hall of Fame:

Skip Maggoria, Founder, Skip’s Music, Encina ‘65

Liliana Ferrer, Ambassador of Mexico to Thailand, Del Campo ‘ 82

Wayne Woo, Placer County Sheriff, Bella Vista ‘88

Alexandra Huynh, 5th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Mira Loma ‘20

This event is not simply a party, it is an invitation for everyone—educators, families, community members, and local businesses—to come together in a spirit of collaboration, connection, and community. With tickets priced at $150, your participation not only promises an inspiring night filled with recognition and joy (dinner and drinks), but also contributes to funding curriculum, resources, and opportunities that ignite innovative learning in San Juan Unified schools.

Sunday FunDay is an annual event held on the 4th Sunday of every September at Rusch Park in Citrus Heights. Sunday FunDay wraps up the summer outdoor events and is partnered with Sunrise Recreation and Park District. This is a family friendly event with business, craft, non-profit, and service group vendors. The event consists of free activities for the family which includes inflatables, music, K-9 demonstrations, food vendors, and some San Juan Unified school booths! All of the activities are free with the exception of food and beverage purchases. We hope to see you there!

Having a family engagement event? FACE offers items for checkout at no cost to support family engagement efforts! Staff and volunteer leaders (PTO/PTA, etc) are welcome to request items on behalf of school family engagement events. We will follow up and confirm in 2-3 business days. Pickup and return of items is at the San Juan Unified District Office during pre-scheduled hours.

For more information, visit our Lending Library of Fun Catalog!

The FACE Mobile has had a busy summer visiting summer school locations and helping bring at-home learning and resources to families all across our San Juan Unified community. It's gearing up to visit every school site again this fall and will be making special appearances at many family engagement events, as well!

To request a FACE Mobile visit for one of your events, please click the link below:

https://bit.ly/FACEoutreach

To check out where the FACE Mobile is headed to next, visit our family education website at www.sanjuan.edu/familyed and click the FACE Mobile tab!

Our FACE team is excited to announce our newest outreach beginning in October-- Community Care Hubs! A Community Care Hub is a regional pop-up community resource fair organized across various schools and locations within our school district. These events are designed to bring essential resources and support services directly to our families and students, making it easier for them to access the help they need in a convenient and welcoming environment. At each Community Care Hub event, local district departments and community partners are invited to host information tables where they can share valuable information and offer resources to attendees. These events provide an excellent opportunity for departments and organizations to engage directly with the community, build relationships, and raise awareness about services and programs they offer. Whether it’s exploring resources, learning valuable information to support student success, offering tangible goods, providing referrals to social support services, or offering other vital supports, the goal of the event is to help address the important needs of our diverse community.

We invite you to be a part of this effort to engage and support our community! The upcoming Community Care Hubs will take place in October on the following dates:

• October 3rd, 3-5:30 pm, Starr King K-8 School (4848 Cottage Way. Carmichael)

• October 10th, 3-5:30 pm, San Juan High School (7551 Greenback Lane, Citrus Heights)

• October 24th, 3:00 - 5:30 pm, El Camino High School (4300 El Camino Avenue, Sacramento)

Please share the Community Care Hub information with your school communities! All families and staff are welcome to attend!

We know how challenging and time-consuming it is to search for resources for families, so our team has been building a Digital Resource Library for all sites and departments to have access to. In this library, you'll find flyers and links for district and community resources to assist with housing, clothing, food, health, special education, college and career, community service partners, and more. We'll be adding to this library regularly, so keep checking to see what's new! The link allows anyone in San Juan to view the resources, so please feel free to share the link with your site/ department team members!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12Roaab9q0nSbMBTZ6Ef3nzVJ8BRxtgPj?usp=sharing

San Juan Central Food Closet

The San Juan Unified food closet is located at the Central Enrollment Center (3700 Garfield Ave. in Carmichael) and serves families who are in need of non-perishable food items.

Hours:

Open year round, Monday through Friday (8:30 am - 2:00 pm)
Closed on non-school days and holidays. If you are unavailable at these times or need further assistance, please email Veronica Allen (veronica.allen@sanjuan.edu)

Communication struggles are often secondary concerns that result from lack of clear and consistent communication with parents. Using simple and respectful language, avoiding jargon and acronyms, and providing relevant and accurate information goes a long way. When possible, explain the rationale behind school decisions, policies, and actions, and how they benefit the students and the school. Be transparent and honest, and avoid making promises you cannot keep. Follow up with regular messages and communication to families to keep them informed of any changes or updates.

Communication with families is a pillar of any educator’s REAL Family Engagement practice because it gives families access to the information and connections they need to play Five Essential Roles in their children’s education.

Tracking families’ communication preferences, contact information, and last touchpoint with you can be a lot to manage. That’s why our Ongoing Communication Reflection Tool is here to help! Designed with simplicity, flexibility, and organization in mind, the Ongoing Communication Reflection Tool, available in English and Spanish, can support any educator who has direct access to students and their families.

Use this Tool to reflect on your individual practice of building trusting relationships and meaningful partnerships with families. It provides space to reflect on the quality of your relationships with students’ families, plan next steps for ongoing communication efforts, and/or assess the equity of your communication and relationships with your students’ families.

The Ongoing Communication Reflection Tool is flexible! It can be:

• used in IEP meetings,
• shared with administration as evidence of impact,
• utilized with colleagues during team meetings,
• employed to self-assess if you communicate equitably with families,
• and more!

As you reflect with the Ongoing Communication Reflection Tool, you might want to learn more about your family engagement practice. Use our new Family Engagement Assessment Tool at www.engageyourfams.org to understand where your practice is already strong and get personalized recommendations for how you can improve.

To learn more about The Flamboyan Foundation and all their effective family engagement tools and resources, visit https://flamboyanfoundation.org/

Check out this awesome 100 Positive Phone Calls whole staff challenge you can do on the staff room whiteboard! Every staff member who makes a positive phone call home to a student's family initials and dates a box on the grid. Set a whole staff goal to have the grid filled by a certain date and watch positive relationships quickly bloom between staff, students and families!

We know the start to this school year may have had some things that didn't as well as we each had hoped, and it can become very easy to fall into the trap of deficit thinking and pessimism. Once we get into that mindset, it can be challenging to get ourselves out. Therefore, it's important to shift our focus to instead think about what's going WELL... and you'll be amazed at how that one little question really does change everything! (And, of course, chocolate also helps... so we've included an extra helping of that in this month's FACE Fan Mailer!)

WAYS TO USE THIS QUESTION TO BOOST MORALE WITH YOUR SCHOOL COMMUNITY:

• Create a bulletin board/ whiteboard space in your staff room where staff can write down something that's going WELL, whether it's in their classrooms, on the playground, arrival/dismissal, family engagement, new site procedure, leadership practice, colleague support, etc. Make time to share some of these positive shout outs during a staff meeting or in your staff newsletter.

• Use the "What's Going Well" prompt to lead a community circle in class or as your morning icebreaker with students. By helping them to intentionally start their days focusing on the good, you'll help them warm up that optimistic mindset for the rest of the day.

• Create a "What's Going Well" QR code to share with your families and encourage them to use it as a way to give positive feedback and appreciation shout outs to staff, students, and fellow parents who are helping make this school year the greatest that it can be! If the shout out includes the family member's name who submitted it, follow up with a thank you email letting them know how much you appreciate them taking the time to let you know what's going well. You'll be amazed at the difference these small but mighty positive interactions make for everyone!

Looking for a fun way to boost staff morale, deliver a special treat to a classroom, celebrate an outstanding student or colleague, or reward positive behavior or attendance? Create a Woot Woot Wagon and fill it with some goodies to deliver around campus or your department! Our local Starbucks generously donated hot coffee to go with the candy donations, and both made for a special Woot Woot Wednesday treat for all the hardworking colleagues working round the clock to make the start of the school year as smooth as possible!

You can get your own Woot Woot cart on Amazon here or you can fill out this form below to enter to win one from our FACE team!

https://forms.gle/bSwMkt3dxY8r4XXA9

Congratulations to these three lucky FACE Forum readers whose names were selected after they entered the Who's Ready for S'more Back to School Fun contest! They each won a S'mores Party Kit, which will be mailed out to them at their schools for S'more back to school celebrating! Woohoo!

• Nooria Azin- Howe Avenue Elementary
• Wendy Benson- Cowan Elementary
• Rebecca Friedman- Deterding Elementary

There are so many wonderful student, family and community engagement highlights happening around the district! We'd love to spotlight any of those efforts that your site, department, or another team is doing! Send us an email at face@sanjuan.edu and we'll highlight your shoutout in the next FACE Forum newsletter!

Many thanks to our amazing district social workers who reached out to ask if they could do anything extra to help get our students ready for a successful return to school, and ended up sorting a room-full of donations, stuffing backpacks and pencil pouches, creating take-home learning kits, and more! There were hundreds of students and families who were extra thankful for all their hard work and support! Thank you, San Juan Unified Social Workers!

A huge THANK YOU to Walmart Supercenter of Citrus Heights - Auburn Blvd. They graciously invited us out and allowed us to solicit school supply donations to help stock the FACE Mobile. It is because of the generosity of the community that we were able to stock the bus and then deliver these items to our San Juan Unified youth at our early August FACE Mobile stops. Donations like these help us stock the FACE mobile with seasonal items that our youth and families need.

Click the link below to access August's newsletter and see all the resources, information and supports for you and your school community!

https://secure.smore.com/n/yrm8n9

Want to receive the monthly FACE Forum newsletters directly to your email inbox during the school year? Our newsletter is now being emailed directly to recipients who have opted in to receiving the monthly newsletter. For those who choose not to opt in to receiving the newsletter via email, you will still be able to access the newsletter in Behind the Scenes (all SJUSD employees), Leadership Reflections (administrators), Secretary Scoop (secretaries), and Elementary/Secondary Updates.

To opt in to receiving The FACE Forum newsletter directly to your Inbox, please complete this brief opt-in here: https://forms.gle/3DQ62CUCZy4HjzGt6

Email: face@sanjuan.edu
Website: www.sanjuan.edu/face

Intranet: intranet.sanjuan.edu/face
Location: 3738 Walnut Avenue, Carmichael, CA, USA
Phone: (916) 971-7929

Facebook & Instagram- @SanJuanUnifiedFACE