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| Steel Valley meeting yields closer community ties |
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Following a community meeting last month at Homestead’s Carnegie Library, Bryan Macuga came away with contacts he thinks can help him with ideas for building the tutoring program at Steel Valley School District’s Park Elementary School where he’s been principal for two years.
He was delighted to make the connections, through which he plans to collaborate with Homestead’s Auberle Education Center. Just as importantly, however, the meeting gave him a broader familiarity with all the resources in the district’s surrounding municipalities.
“For me, as a young principal, the best thing was to put faces with names and to hear what the different organizations are doing with kids,” Macuga said.
Macuga’s experience was exactly what district leadership teams aim for when they reach into their communities, said The Consortium for Public Education’s Executive Director, Linda Croushore. “Bringing all stakeholders to the table is fundamental to the work of these teams.”
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Steel Valley’s community meeting also was an opportunity for the district to share its core beliefs and successes with others in its communities it serves, said Superintendent Bill Kinavey. The library meeting was the second the district has held to connect to the three communities—Homestead, Munhall and West Homestead—where its students live. It drew organizations as disparate as the Rainbow Kitchen, a local merchants’ association and neighborhood churches. All told, about 60 attended.
“I want to have a better relationship between our schools and communities,” Kinavey said, noting that the meetings also identified possible community service options for Steel Valley students. “There are programs and organizations in the community that some of our schools may not be aware of and visa versa.”
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