Building Brighter Futures Toolkit
A McKinney-Vento Toolkit and Strategies
The Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District (CRPUSD) Building Brighter Futures program provides a powerful example of how community collaboration and systems alliance can support family and student success. This program is rooted in the “Family Resource Center” model of providing comprehensive support services that are embedded in the community, culturally sensitive, and integrate cross-system collaboration to strengthen all children and families – specifically those who qualify for Mc-Kinney Vento support.
In the CRPUSD, this collaborative model operated by our lead partner, Child Parent Institute (CPI), offers a powerful way to expand services made available to students and families and to assist McKinney-Vento liaisons who face high caseloads with limited support. The integrated support provided by a school-based Family Resource Center is centered in the Strengthening Families framework, which helps parents raise healthy and successful children through building parental resilience, healing from trauma, increasing family social connections, providing concrete support in times of need, teaching effective parenting and child development practices, and strengthening the social and emotional competence of children.
With this Building Brighter Futures Toolkit, we aim to provide starting points, inspiration, ideas, and tangible tools that other schools and Local Education Agencies can use to grow a foundation of support for students and families experiencing homelessness.
About this Project
The Building Brighter Futures Toolkit is made possible by a two-year Homeless Innovation Program (HIP) grant through the Homeless Education program of the California Department of Education.
The purpose of the HIP is to identify innovative practices that improve the educational stability, access, support, and academic achievement of children and youth experiencing homelessness. The primary goal of the HIP grant is to build capacity at the local level to implement systemic changes that improve student outcomes for students experiencing homelessness. CRPUSD received the HIP grant for 2022-2024, in recognition of innovative practices in city-community partnerships.
The Building Brighter Futures Toolkit provides other school districts a look into how CRPUSD created a model to support families with basic needs, parent education and mental health resources by creating a Family Resource Center in one of the highest needs neighborhoods in our district. All tools and templates in this Toolkit are made available free of charge for educational use by other LEAs and communities.
Many thanks to the administration, staff, partners, and families who participate in this project and help make our work visible and shareable with others. Thank you for Building Brighter Futures for students and families in Rohnert Park – and now across the entire state and beyond! We'd love to hear from you. Reach out if you have questions or comments: Matt Marshall, Director of Student Services, Phone: (707) 792-4540
Click the video below to learn more about our Family Resource Center!
How to Use the Building Brighter Futures Toolkit
This toolkit provides an overview of how one school district launched a Family Resource Center on an elementary school campus in a high-needs neighborhood and provides a set of resources other education agencies and schools can draw from to implement a similar model in their community. Links are provided to each Toolkit section as well as to individual elements within in section to facilitate easy access of the information you need most in the order you need it.
The Building Brighter Futures Toolkit includes the following sections (click on section title to visit linked page):
Section 1: John Reed Elementary Family Resource Center Overview
A summary of why and how the CRPUSD partnered with CPI to develop and launch a Family Resource Center on this campus in a high-needs neighborhood. Includes a description of the Strengthening Families Framework in which the FRC at John Reed is centered, and links to key trainings to support implementing the framework with fidelity.
Section 2: Family Resource Center Model
Overview of how the Family Resource Center puts the Strengthening Families Framework into action through Parent Education, Financial Supports, and Outreach and Linkages.
A how-to guide for creating a Family Resource Center, this section includes information on Developing Relationships, Creating Unified Vision and Operations, Forming the FRC Team, Convening and Engaging Community Prevention Partners, Referral Process, Providing Services, Providing Basic Needs Assistance, Training, and Funding/Resourcing Your FRC.
Section 4: CRPUSC Education for Homeless Children and Youth Procedures Manual
This comprehensive guide provides detailed examples of policies, procedures, tools and resources that combined provide the support children need when their family experiences the unique challenges of homelessness. Includes Policies and Procedures, McKinney-Vento Identification Process, Service Provision Tools, Parent Engagement, Community Partners Collaboration, McKinney-Vento Annual Staff Training, Local Family Resources, District Demographic Data, and Sonoma County Annual Point in Time Homeless Count.
Section 5: Library of Building Brighter Futures Toolkit Documents
A summary listing with links to all documents and resources referenced throughout the Building Brighter Futures toolkit overview sections.
