NORTH CAROLINA'S PROMISE

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• Schools are where kids are and are known by name to caring adults
• Schools-public, private or parochial-are the very heart of every community
• The local school-community partnership serves the pivotal role of weaving a network of support for young people
• Schools are the institutions in most communities through which more young people can be reached

THE COMMITMENT
A School of Promise is a local education site publicly committed to providing access to five fundamental resources (called the "Five Promises" by America's Promise) for young people through formal school-community collaboration.

THE FUTURE
Experience demonstrates that a positive community-school relationship is one of the most effective means of connecting young people with the help they need to live a healthy, fulfilling life and to contribute positively to society. Armed with resources inherent in the Five Promises, brokered into schools through a joint school-community team of committed partners, young people can fulfill their potential and achieve all that is possible in their lives. Through their Schools of Promise, parents, teachers, administrators, business members and other local community leaders provide a "teaching example" for the rest of the nation-demonstrating how all of us can help to pull our weight!

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
There are three sequential stages of development or involvement for School of Promise:

1. Initiation stage: Community Partnership and Commitment
2. Transition stage: Access to Additional Resources through Collaborative Efforts
3. Fulfilling All Five: Connecting All Students in Need and Reaching Out

INITIAL STAGE (NATIONALLY REGISTERING YOUR SOP'S COMMITMENT)
This level of engagement occurs once the school-community partnership has been initiated (i.e., the partners have agreed to establish a local process for identifying service providers in the community who have the expertise and are committed to connecting resources to students in need). Then, the appropriate school and community leaders (normally the school principal and the lead community partner) submit their pledge to be recorded publicly on the Schools of Promise national web site. These leaders are mutually pledging to ensure that, by a specified date (to be established by the local partnership), all young people in their School of Promise have access to the following:

• An ongoing relationship with a caring adult;
• a safe place during both school and non-school hours;
• a healthy start and lifestyle;
• a marketable skill; and
• An opportunity to give back to his or her community through service.

• Has established a multi-sector school site team, to serve as a focal point for School of Promise support activities and to assist with planning, coordination and accountability to resource providers. (This site team can be responsible for tracking the generation and delivery of resources and recording appropriate information concerning progress in meeting agreed outcomes.)
• Is maintaining a collaborative process to develop increased access for more students in need to additional community resources, including commitments from corporations, foundations, institutions of higher education and other potential providers;
• Has set specific, realistic, measurable goals (numbers of students, by when, by Promise, etc.) for identifying and connecting students with specific resources representing the Five Promises;
• Has designated specific individuals (such as parents, teachers, small group leaders, business persons) or other leaders within the school or at the community level who have the responsibility for ensuring students in need are actually connected to service or resource providers (representing the Five Promises);
• Has set clear expectations for outcomes resulting from the school-community partnership-especially relating increased access by students to services and other resources (representing the Five Promises) to improvements in school attendance, in grades or test scores, in stay-in-school rates, to decreases in instances of misbehavior, or to other outcomes determined by the local partnership.

• They are actively engaged in "reaching back and pulling forward" another school - by providing information or other assistance to other teams that are going through the steps of becoming a nationally recognized SoP. (Ideally, an SoP that wants to achieve distinction will assist a sister school that is less fortunate in terms of funding or other resources.)
• They have identified and put in place a "community champion" to serve full-time as a resource broker and relationship builder at the city/county level, one who stimulates and coordinates the development of organizational partnerships necessary to provide current resources and to create the sustaining base for continued fulfillment of the community's promises to its young people;
• They have identified a "promise coordinator" at individual Schools of Promise. The coordinator's role is to work for the principal, freeing teachers to focus on academics and providing full-time on-site liaison so that the resources and services brought to the school by the community champion are connected with designated students in a personal, coordinated, and accountable manner.

• Make and Record the SoP Commitment
• Ensure Your SoP is Listed on the National Registry
• Publicize Your Progress and Continuing Resource Needs
• Connect the Local Private Sector to Your SoP
• Obtain National Recognition for Your SoP
• Strive to Become Nationally Distinguished

• From establishing the local partnership and publicly recording the joint school-community commitment
• Onto the level of actually connecting services or other resources (fulfilling one or more of the Five Promises) to a number of students
• Then to the stage of not only assuring that each of the Five Promises is being fulfilled for all their students but also "reaching back and helping pull others forward."

• The appropriate school and community officials (normally the school principal and lead community partner) jointly enter into a partnership agreement-to engage a multi-sector, collaborative community team that will provide access to needed resources for students in their School of Promise.
• These two key school and community leaders then enter the national Schools of Promise web site and jointly register their pledge by completing the entries on the electronic registration page. This registration form can also be printed in a user-friendly format and faxed or mailed. (Alternatively, school or community leaders can call 1-800-CIS-4KIDS or 1-800-365-0153 and request an information/registration packet.

• Receipt of the joint pledge is acknowledged with return e-mail from www.schoolsofpromise.org
• The name and location of the school is then listed on the SoP site as a "Nationally Registered" SoP
• Next, the two school-community leaders who submitted the pledge will receive essential information for "Building A School-Community Team for Schools of Promise." Focusing on the coordination, collaboration and integration of efforts, this will assist community partners to establish the local infrastructure to support their local Schools of Promise.
• The registry information for each School of Promise is shared among the responsible AASA, AP and CIS representatives. Once an SoP has registered, the pledging school and community leaders will be provided with a point of contact who will offer additional technical assistance to these leaders to help them through the sequential stages of development
• The local school-community partnership can access the interactive web site of America's Promise and check the "Get Involved" section (searching by zip code for national and local organizations that are already helping to fulfill the Five Promises in the area)
• The local school-community partnership can return at any time to the national Schools of Promise web site to obtain information about effective practices that are working in other communities to connect schools with the resources needed to help children learn, stay in school and prepare for life

• The two school-community leaders submitting the SoP pledge will receive e-mail information that will permit them to publish their successes and their need for additional resources in a summary form-either on their existing web site or by opening their own, new space on the web. Posting on the web allows the school-community partnership to make public its declaration to help young people to succeed, highlight its progress in fulfilling the Promises for students and advertise its continuing resource needs
• Simple to use electronic tools (and the training to employ them) are provided, without charge, through the national partnership between the Family Education Network, AASA and CIS
• Once the nationally registered SoP posts its progress and needs summary on the Internet (using the "fill in the blank" form provided via the return from the national SoP web site), a "hot link" is created from the national site (www.schoolsofpromise.org) to the local SoP web page

• The private sector is a key component of the local school-community team, and demonstrates its involvement through commitment and action
• Every successful company does its core business very well. SoP present for-profit organizations an opportunity to exercise their core competencies and share their successes in support of young people. For example, most business executives can help SoP to design and implement a strategy or business plan that spells out-
• Which Promises will be delivered and when
• Where is the best facility for making the connection (school site or a partner's facility)
• Which schools or students are most in need
• Who is responsible for ensuring students are connected with the services available
• What additional resources are needed to fulfill all Five Promises for each student

• Through their link with AASA, AP and CIS, the local school-community team can track the outcome of their plan for connecting students in need with the Promises and summarize their successes and shortfalls, as indicated in Step 3
• The information posted on the local SoP web space (Step 3) will be reviewed by representatives of AASA, AP, CIS and may also be examined by the many national commitment makers to AP, as well as members of the general public who visit the site. Representatives of AASA, AP or CIS may contact the school-community partnership to obtain additional information-if necessary to ensure that the local SoP is eligible for "national recognition."
• AASA, AP and CIS will officially recognize the School of Promise in a jointly issued certificate. Once the certificate is dispatched to the school-community team, the school is identified on the national SoP web site as "Nationally Recognized." The purpose of this designation is to highlight this specific SoP to all national commitment makers (as well as to members of the general public who may visit the national web site). This recognition also draws attention to the school-community team's need for continued assistance by other corporate, professional and nonprofit resource providers-so that the SoP can attain "distinguished" status

• AASA, AP or CIS may highlight a Nationally Recognized SoP in correspondence with national commitment makers and in selected public awareness initiatives
• AP will encourage their many commitment makers to visit the national SoP web site, to identify Nationally Recognized SoP in communities where the commitment makers have local or state level operations
• For SoP whose lead community partner is a member of the CIS network of state and local programs, the CIS national office may highlight their achievements in public awareness materials and will, in turn, share information with these school-community partners of appropriate funding opportunities being offered by federal agencies, national foundations or other providers

• It is assumed that every Nationally Registered SoP will work to become a Nationally Recognized SoP and many of these school-community partnerships will then strive to achieve designation as Nationally Distinguished SoP
• Those school-community teams who would be candidates for the "distinguished" designation will have to be nominated in writing by their community officials, endorsed by a national sponsor (e.g., an AP national commitment maker or a designated partner of AASA or CIS that is supporting the Schools of Promise initiative). The nomination will have to be well documented and a national review team will make the final selections