Broader Partnerships

This chart outlines the questions that need to be asked when forming an overarching leadership council or when selecting an existing entity to serve in the function. The dimensions that need to be considered are goals, alignment, geography, staffing, connections and structures, functions and roles, authority/mandate and accountability.

The guide is divided into three parts:

The Rationale for Youth Engagement in Government provides a theoretical and historical context for youth councils by articulating the rationale for engaging youth in policy and decision-making processes and by explaining the Forum’s Principles of Youth Engagement.

The case studies described in this report underscore the critical role that community-based organizations can play both in developing young people’s leadership abilities and driving positive community change. Specifically, the authors push beyond principles, identifying effective organizational and management practices that can help any organization committed to meaningful youth engagement advance their efforts in concrete ways. Additionally, the outcomes they identify present a useful impact framework for much-needed future program evaluation and research efforts.

How are the children and youth in your community doing? What’s their high school graduation rate? How about the number of adolescent pregnancies, rate of childhood obesity and the level of juvenile crime? Are they ready by the age of 21 to go to college, get a job, be a parent?

By Sharon D. Kruse

Kruse is the author of the AASA book Building Strong School Cultures: A Leader’s Guide to Change, published by Corwin Press.

The following tips can help you build a culture of collaboration in your school.

Collaboration between business and education can ensure that students graduate high school equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in the workplace, post-secondary education and life. In this publication, the American Association of School Administrators and Corporate Voices for Working Families highlight the benefit of these partnerships, tips for engaging educators and business leaders, and a case study illustrating these partnerships in action.

Leadership capacity audits serve the same purpose as financial audits. They provide leaders with a structured opportunity to receive feedback on core functions that are critical to their mission so that they can increase their overall horsepower to make sustained change. The attached list of key findings and recommendations from a generic city will give you an idea of the helpful guidance this process can have.

Over the years, policies requiring the creation of a new collaboration that focuses on a narrow topic have left many states and communities with dozens of separate, concurrent collaborations.  As one local leader put it: "I used to have to attend meetings with 17 different departments; now I have to participate in 17 different coalitions."  Georgia, for example, met a federal Head Start requirement regarding early childhood issues by modifying its existing children’s cabinet rather than creating a new collaborative.