EDLD 5326: SWOT Analysis of Parental Involvement Committee

Aspect	Parent Program	Community Program
Strengths: Positive features of the partnership. What are its resources and capabilities on which to potentially build?	The Reed Academy Parental Involvement Committee meet to plan fundraisers, involve parents, discuss concerns, plan upcoming events, and solicit community involvement.	Brings businesses and community leaders into schools to develop awareness and understanding about the challenges facing public schools. It also gives the schools an opportunity to spotlight achievements and create ongoing partnerships.
Weaknesses: Sometimes a weakness is the absence of a strength, such as high cost. Other times, a weakness could be the flip side of a strength. Huge involvement can be a strength, but it might be a weakness if you are trying to gain consensus around a change.	One weakness is that a small number of parents are members of the committee with little to no teacher representation.  Another weakness is the lack of communication to get more people involved.	Reed Academy being a school that is mostly Hispanic has limited resources in providing students with bilingual communication, cultural understanding and career exploration locally.
Opportunities: Potential opportunities for growth or becoming stronger. Examples include the involvement of new people, unexpected funding, and new possibilities within an existing partnership.	Potential growth is found in continuing outreach efforts to parents through personal invitations.  Invitations to participate in activities such as Open House and Parent/Teacher/Student conferences scheduled at least once a year are opportunities for growth in parent involvement and to communicate needs for help with school events and projects.	Reaching out to more parents and stakeholders that are not involved.
Threats: People or factors that threaten the program. Examples include anticipated downsizing in a partner and the “graduation” of a strong, informal community leader.	Lack of funding due to the budget cuts in education that all school districts are facing can be considered a threat.  In addition, the lack of parents involved causes some concern because the lack of parental support has proven to hurt student achievement.  So therefore, more parents need to get involved to keep the parent involvement committee active and effective.	The biggest threats to the Parental Involvement Committee are the follow through of those community members, businesses, parents, and teachers who sign up to participate and the possibility of low attendance at planned events.  All of the planned events depend on the participation as well as the dependability of others.  This is always a concern when dealing with people.  Also, if community businesses and members invest their time in planned events and programs that have little turnout they are less likely to participate again.  So, measures should be taken to ensure adequate advertisement of events and the attendance of families.