Parent Engagement Coordinator at Uplift Community School

Are you passionate about Sustainable Community Schools and transforming school communities into hubs for wraparound academic, health, and social supports for the entire community? Do you build strong relationships and enjoy collaborating with students, parents, educators, school staff, and community members? Do you believe in supporting schools in their goals of racial and social justice, restorative practices, parent engagement, and shared leadership? If so, please review this exciting opportunity below:

About Our Organization

At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing Chicago’s youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success. Founded in 1924 today Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs serving more than 8,500 youth while touching the lives of more than 14,000 youth, parents, teachers, and community members.

Position Summary: The Parent Engagement Coordinator at Uplift Community High School works alongside school leadership and staff to develop and implement parent and family engagement activities and training to ensure parents and caregivers are positioned to partner with school leaders to champion their children’s education and social emotional growth. The Specialist provides training to authentically integrate and strengthen parent engagement in school activities, expand opportunities for continued learning, and grow voluntary community service and civic participation.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Collaborates with Youth Guidance staff, school staff and volunteers to develop a comprehensive parent and family engagement approach consisting of workshops, classes and activities for parents at their local school; helps to conduct effective orientation sessions and on-going parent engagement sessions to support positive program outcomes, provides training, coaching, modeling and technical assistance relating to parental involvement strategies.
• Coordinates and implements research-based strategies to support parent engagement; collaborates with Youth Guidance and school staff, community-based partners to develop family-friendly school climate; collaborates with other parent engagement professionals.
• Coordinates and provides direct outreach to parents, caregivers, and community members to champion authentic parent engagement.
• Provides leadership for successful implementation of the Annual Youth Guidance Parent Leadership Conference (PLC). Works with school staff to ensure active parent engagement in the PLC.
• Coordinates with other community-based partners to strengthen alignment of resources to maximize impact
• Keeps excellent records of all parent involvement activities, reports, surveys, funding, annual program evaluations, and communications to parents. Effectively meet all program deliverables to meet all reporting deadlines.
• Works with school staff and parents to ensure that all program-related consents and evaluation tools (including parent conduct surveys, etc.) are submitted; reviews annual reports to evaluate the effectiveness of their parent involvement programs; develops, analyzes and distributes results of surveys to program staff, school staff to strengthen programs. 

Minimum Qualifications

Education/Experience/Training

• Bachelor’s degree highly preferred from an accredited university
• 3-5 years of relevant experience
• Excellent communication and organizational skills
• Experience serving as an advocate for children and parents
• Strong public speaking, Interpersonal, and presentation skills
• Self-motivated leaders who can work independently as well as part of team
• Knowledge of family engagement research and literature
• Understands and respects the diversity of families’ economic, linguistic and cultural

backgrounds and situations

• Experience with developing collaborative partners and building relationships with constituents in the community (including school district central office, school principals, schools staff, community-based organizations, universities etc)
• Strong understanding of child and adolescent growth, student achievement data, and social emotional development
• Ability to effectively engage school, community and district level leaders
• Ability to develop and conduct trainings with agency and school staff and share best practices to support program goals
• Ability to develop and manage budgets and mobilize resources to support program goals
• Bilingual Preferred

Skills/Abilities

• Experience and comfort working with diverse populations
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills
• Rapport building
• Service oriented
• Knowledge of social service or education programs
• Effective time management and prioritization skills
• Ability to work independently and as a member of a team
• Proficient in the use of Microsoft Office products (outlook, word, excel, power point)

Competencies

• Communication: Able to use effective written and oral communication with internal and external audiences and stakeholders; demonstrates empathy and listening
• Client orientation: Can recognize needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation to ultimately maximize impact
• Equity mindset: Understands and is committed to goals of equity; consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace
• Growth mindset: Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if change is required; Demonstrated ability to be solutions-focused, self-reflective, and dedicated the continuous improvement of service quality
• Ownership and quality of work: Effectively manages own work and work of teams ensuring delivery of high-quality work. Proven ability to be innovative and a self-starter
• Supervisory skills: effectively manages and develops others
• Mission driven: demonstrates commitment to the mission of the organization as whole and alignment with organizational values

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Occasional local and national travel

DEI Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, inclusion and Belonging (DEI&B) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and staff and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth and staff are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DEIB through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:

• Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff;
• Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices;
• Influencing systems that youth, their families, staff, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEIB in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people and those around them.

Youth Guidance is an equal opportunity employer and proudly values diversity, equity, inclusivity, and belonging. Youth Guidance does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law and is committed to creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity along all of these lines. People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

EEO/M/F/D/V/SO