Partnerships and Collaboratives Involving Parents, Businesses, and Community Agencies

The New Beginnings Project illustrates many components of collaborative arrangements and provides examples of implementation plans. The New Beginnings Project opened at the Hamilton Elementary School in San Diego through the collaborative efforts of several groups. The project involved a number of components that may be useful in other settings:

A needs assessment was conducted in the community and in the agencies.
Employees across the agencies developed a sense of respect and collegiality that continued while the school-linked services were being implemented.
The collaborative agreed on how to share and use fiscal resources to serve the students in the school, which resulted in a common plan for serving the schools, overcame the fragmentation in many of the agencies, and made clear to all what was important.
The agencies worked to free up staffing requirements to make the use of staff in the program more flexible.
The agencies worked closely with the principal to establish a strong link with the school.
The principal worked closely with the agencies and became involved in the planning process to understand the collaborative's purposes, shape the tasks of the school, and build commitment.