Thank You for Participating - Principal for Almost a Day 2015
On Thursday, October 15, 2015 more than 140 business executives, civic leaders, and non-profit CEOs walked in the shoes of principals and superintendents from five school districts as a part of All Hands Raised’s 15th Annual Principal for Almost a Day (PFAD) presented by Comcast. We would like to thank our record-breaking 250+ participants for making time in their busy schedules to come together to support our schools and their students.
Founded 15 years ago with the goal of building understanding, awareness and partnerships between school and community leaders, PFAD continues to serve a critical role to improve community responsibility with local schools:
“This was my sixth time hosting a leader for Principal for Almost a Day, and each time it brings new insight and understanding of how the community views our schools and how we as school leaders can more intentionally connect our work to both the resources and the needs of our community. I have always had such invested and interested leaders participate. I enjoy showing others the work that we are engaged in to help spread the word about our educational system in the local community,” said Andrea Sande, Principal of Lynch Wood Elementary School in the Centennial School District. Sande is principal at one of six schools in the county that are in their third year of digging deep into improving school attendance, taking continuous improvement to a new level this year with technical assistance and facilitation from AHR staff.
Guest principals “reported for duty” for the first bell at their assigned school spending the morning immersed with their principal or superintendent. Immediately following the school visits, participants gathered from 1-2pm in the South Atrium of the Moda Center for a lunch debrief and panel discussion on the importance of school attendance to improving high school graduation rates. This year’s lunch discussion, titled “A Community United to Improve School Attendance,” was facilitated by Portland Business Journal Publisher Craig Wessel and featured: Dan Field, Sr. Director, Community Benefit & External Affairs, Kaiser Permanente; Don Grotting, Superintendent, David Douglas School District; Carmen Rubio, Executive Director, Latino Network; and Liesl Wendt, Director, Multnomah County, Department of County Human Services.
To see some of the 2015 guest principals in action, see our Facebook album!
For more reasons to get involved, read about Victoria Lara’s story of impact at Roosevelt High School and about Kaiser Permanente’s experiences at Lincoln Park Elementary School.
For more information about Principal for Almost a Day, please contact Rosemary Schwimmer at rosemary@allhandsraised.org or at 503-234-5404.
Special thanks to our 2015 sponsors for helping to make Principal for Almost a Day possible:
