ESTABLISHING AND MAINTAINING PARTNERSHIPS

A core part our work as an office is to improve the ways in which partners and schools sustain their existing partnerships by providing resources and technical assistance and by supporting the expansion of partnerships through assistance in matching partners with interested schools.  To that end, here you will find some resources that pertain to the work of establishing and maintaining partnerships with schools, as well as information about next steps to take if you are interested in expanding to new schools.

Partnerships Expansion:

If you are interested in expanding your school-based partnership to other District schools, please complete our Partner Expansion/School Match Form. Our office is willing and able to help you identify potential partner schools and help you connect with those schools.

Get the Word Out!

Do you have an event or opportunity you’d like us to share with our network? Submit an item via OSP’s Newsletter Item Submission Form. Please note that we only publish FREE opportunities in our newsletter, and we do NOT advertise field trips.

School Partner Agreement

In the 2017-2018 school year, the School District of Philadelphia piloted the use of the School Partner Agreement (SPA), which is a new legal agreement for school-based partners.  This agreement standardizes the development of a scope of work and can be completed by the partner and submitted to the District for review. Our hope is that this will expedite the process for formalizing agreements between partners and the District.

More detailed information about the SPA process and eligibility criteria, an example of a filled-in SPA and a link to begin completing a SPA for your program are available here.

Last year, 120+ partners had fully-executed SPAs on file with the District!

Site-Specific Collaboration Plan

In addition to a binding legal agreement with the District, we encourage partners to develop a Site-Specific Collaboration Plan (“Collaboration Plan”) with each school they are partnering with. The Collaboration Plan is an opportunity for school staff and partner to establish a shared vision for the partnership and clarify partner and school expectations.

For more information about the Collaboration Plan, and a template of the plan, please click here. We recommend that you download the document and open it in Adobe Acrobat to access the fillable PDF and signature function.