SCPS Community Bus - Reaching Into Our Community

In an effort to better engage our diverse community, parents, and students, the Office of Communications and Community Engagement is spear-heading an effort to secure, design, and create a Parent, Community and Literacy Resource Bus. This bus will enable staff to take SCPS educational resources out into the communities to reach our parents and students where they are, rather than expecting them to always come to us. The vision for the bus is that it will become an easily recognizable part of SCPS and will be out in the community at a variety of school and community events, school sites, and various activities.

With a growing population within Spotsylvania County, many of our residents with small children do not know where to start, where to go, or what to do when it comes to education. One goal of the bus is to go out into the neighborhood communities, including visiting hotels, where our students and parents live and to take them the information they need for school registration and preparing students to start school. In addition, the bus will be equipped with several laptops, a printer, and WiFi to allow parents to access online resources, and to begin the online school registration process, which they may not have at their home.

The Office of Communications and Community Engagement has secured a bus from SCPS Transportation and working with SCPS Maintenance on a design for both the interior and exterior of the bus. The goal is to have the bus ready to unveil and put into use by Fall 2016.

SCPS plans to use the bus in an attempt to encourage and increase both parent and community involvement by taking the bus out into various neighborhood communities:
1. To collaborate with Smart Beginnings to encourage parents to enroll students in Kindergarten in the Spring and early Summer prior to the first day of school; and
2. To offer parents resources to help with school readiness.

The bus will have a sign-up schedule to go to various locations.

Грант предоставил Northern Virginia (NOVA) (September 2016)