Welcome Back Miner Community!
We are excited to partner with you this year. Together we can model the PRA way, work together, and advocate for education, all in support of our fantastic students!
April Wilkin
Executive Director
Read on to learn more about partnering with PRA
Prospect Ridge Academy sees education as a partnership between the school and parents. PRA considers this partnership with parents to be one of the most important aspects of being a charter school. Parents are encouraged to be involved at PRA in a variety of ways, from serving in the classroom to serving on the board of directors.
Living the PRA Way
All members of the PRA community are asked to live by the PRA Way. Our students are held to the standard of being Prepared, Respectful and Accountable in how they approach their academic careers and how they relate to other students and staff. As the adults in the lives of our students, both staff and parents should serve as role models in these areas. This means holding ourselves to the highest standards in how we perform our professional and volunteer duties and how we relate to each other.
Advocating for PRA
Our parents play a unique role in the PRA community as the school's biggest champions. While parents may think of an “advocate” as a specialized role, in reality all of us are advocates for what we care about. The education of our children is high on the list of what parents care about.
Allison Nicotera, associate director of regional advocacy at Colorado League of Charter Schools, defined it this way: “Advocacy is effective storytelling to impact change.” You, as PRA parents, advocate for the school everyday in how you interact with PRA. These interactions include the ways you get involved in the PRA community and you talk about your students’ PRA experience. Advocacy conversations happen with both instructional and non-instructional staff, other parents, students and the greater community.
Each of us can help PRA, and by extension, all charter schools, succeed through positive storytelling about PRA’s high-quality, student-centered instruction. PRA’s Communications Pathways provide the framework for finding resolutions when we hit bumps in the road. We encourage students and parents to follow the Pathways so we can work together through any issues that may arise.
Greater Advocacy Options
Serving as an advocate for all charter schools places you in the more traditional role of an advocate. Parents can advocate through voting, contacting their senators and representatives, and voicing their opinions on charter school policies and funding. Parents can join the ACT Advocacy Network to discover more ways to support charter schools in Colorado. Learn more about advocating for charter schools by watching The Power of the Charter Parent
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Video Transcription
Hey, Miner families. Welcome back for the 23-24 school year. We're so excited to get started.
We're already off to a great start. We have a building that's ready to welcome students with some new spaces, and we have parking to give back to you and drive lines. So we're excited for these improvements and know it's going to be a great school year.
It's also going to be a great year because we partner with you, and we're excited to continue doing that. It's what's made us a great school for the last 13 years, and I know it's going to help us continue into this school year.
So a few reminders about what that partnership can look like. One of the things that I always ask our community is for us to model the PRA way for our students. We really want to help demonstrate for them what it looks like to be prepared, respectful, and accountable. And as the adults in their lives, we have this great opportunity to serve as a role model for them because everything is a teachable moment.
And then another thing that you can do to be a great partner for PRA is to help advocate on behalf of the school. So I'm really thinking about what it means to give back to our community, what it means to be part of a charter school specifically. We have a great video linked in the Miner Mail this week about what charter advocacy looks like as a charter parent.
And then other ways to give back are the things that you already do. So we're really proud to have such incredible volunteer support. You give of your time and your talent and your resources all the time, and we want that to continue this year. And it's been really fun now that we're back in person, everything's back to full swing, that we can just keep building on those traditions and the things that we have in place.
And again, your students are watching, so this is such a great opportunity to role model for them how you give back to PRA. So we're excited to work with you. I know that you'll follow the communication pathways, so whether it's something hard we're working through, and we're problem solving together, and we can demonstrate to the kids that we can figure things out even when they're hard. Or whether we're celebrating together, we have opportunities to work together as a community. So thank you, Miners. Looking forward to a great year.