School Connect

Connecting 2,485 Arizona schools to their community because it takes a village to help every child reach their potential.
The core mission of School Connect is building a village of champions from the community who invest in our kids and work together to unleash their potential. In working together as a village, we discover how to build win/win partnerships that transform a child’s life, a school’s life, and even a whole community’s life. It is School Connect’s mission to create a clear and simple pathway to bring them all together. We share stories, network, train, and coach champions from schools and communities to build mutually beneficial, strategic partnerships that truly impact outcomes for children. Thus far, School Connect has helped build partnerships in 700 schools in Arizona. In 3 years, our goal is to double that number to 1,400 schools.

School Connect will grow statewide as leaders around Arizona scale the core interaction of a school supported by its village; this growth will expand organically like a fractal. The principal who works with a School Champion to build a village with the minimum of parent, faith, and business champions in strategic collaboration are the key ingredients for schools and communities to flourish in any neighborhood in Arizona.
In 3 years, we will double the number of schools that have a village supporting them from 700 to 1,400. As we scale in Maricopa County, Tucson, and Flagstaff, we will also bring School Connect to rural districts and tribal lands throughout the state. We want each of these schools to have a volunteer School Champion that helps the principal facilitate the village and each district/region to have a Regional Champion. (Have expanded the School Connect relationship to rural and tribal districts: Paloma, Nadaburg, Mojave County, Holbrook, Chinle. Expanded to Tucson Unified, Flowing Wells, and Marana in Pima County October 2022. Begin a case study with Holbrook Unified Spring 2023. CAFE’s are the special focus, with ongoing engagement plans and School Champions the outcome.)
School Champions
In 3 years, we will have a full on-line training program for School Champions that will make it possible for every school with the School Connect model to have a champion who works with a principal to facilitate the village. These School Champions have the Founders Heart! They are passionate about supporting the principal’s vision for their school and effectively build a village of business, faith, parent, and community champions who collaborate strategically in win/win partnerships. (School Champions training program completed in June 2022. Begin training a new cohort of School Champions in Avondale Elementary District Spring 2023)
• Each School Champion will work with the principal to create a baseline assessment identifying where the school stands in key areas where they want to make progress: teacher retention, attendance, school culture, social/emotional support, parent engagement, academic achievement, STEM initiatives etc.
• They will share their goals through a round table conversation with community partners called the CAFE.
• Together the principal, School Champion, and village will track their initiatives to create a school case study that tells the story of progress.
• School Champions are trained by Regional Champions in district cohorts.
Regional Champions
Each school district/region will have a Regional Champion who will coordinate district initiatives, facilitate partnerships, and support and train School Champions. (Regional Champions identified and full training program to begin by March 2023)

• Regional Champions also work alongside the school district to train and support principals with strategic planning and alignment of the activities of their village.

As Founder and President, Tracey Beal would like to lead the national expansion of School Connect and work directly with the Arizona Executive Director who will lead the School Connect Mission in Arizona. Tracey’s role will be to provide ongoing vision and development to the organization nationally; while focusing attention on public speaking, writing, training, and coaching leaders. (Tracey begins to focus on National School Connect by July 2024 with the hire of an Arizona Executive Director)
• We will have an Arizona Executive Director who has a Founder’s Heart with a clear and compelling picture of how to increase School Connect’s impact in all 2,485 schools in the state. The Executive Director will lead the Arizona School Connect Team and represent School Connect in all state-wide partnerships. (Arizona Executive Director hired by July 2024)
• Our Outreach and Events Manager will build our School Connect Programs into “do not miss” events that reach all regions of the state. (Events and Outreach Manager hired June 2022)
• We will hire new City Directors in Tucson and Flagstaff. (July 2024 - Tucson Unified, Marana and Flowing Wells are engaging with Love Our Schools Days and CAFE’s).
• We will develop a formal Development Department which will be responsible for growing our partnerships by 30% and will fully fund the work in Arizona through strategically diversified and sustainable funding streams. (Development Manager hired by July 2023)
o June2022:Created a DevelopmentActionTeam. Development Manager will begin August2023.
• We will have a Marketing and PR Team that makes School Connect a recognized name across Arizona. (Marketing and PR Team hired July 2022)
• Our National Training Development Team will provide School Connect Arizona with powerful leadership development through inspirational storytelling, clear and engaging training and coaching that is personal and relational. Our Arizona City Directors and Regional Champions will use these materials to train and coach champions throughout the state. (Curriculum finished January 2022)
• Our Arizona Board will grow to reflect all of the sectors and constituents we seek to engage and will move School Connect into greater influence, funding, and impact in our state. (Added Dr. Carol Lippert and Dr. Betsy Hargrove July 2022. Began Network Action Team September 2022 with goal of recruiting 100 influencers in the state of Arizona. July 2023)
• School Connect will use the best technologies we can find to achieve quality results that allow us to track engagement of schools and partners as we inspire, train, and coach leaders around the state. (Actively developing our CRM and finished a new website launch October 2023)
• We will have a project management driven culture where our operational systems make our programs, events, and trainings clear and understood by all team members. These operations systems will remove barriers to success and help our team excel with less stress.

School Connect successfully re-launched Love Our Schools Day to engage 234 schools in 34 school districts with 7000 volunteers who served these schools and began a relationship that could grow into a sustainable partnership. There were 24,000 volunteer hours and $250,000 of contributed product. This impacted 140,400 students.

We hosted 8 Community and Family Engagement Round Table Events in 8 school districts bringing together 88 schools with 1000 community partners to create projects that impact 58,776 students.

We hosted our 2023 School Connect Summit which brought 800 superintendents, principals, business, faith, civic & nonprofits leaders together to learn how to collaborate to bring resources that will not only provide core physical needs, but give students hands on experiences in STEAM, reading and math support, and career exploration.

We hosted our first STEM CAFE where 6 STEM schools met with 75 STEM industry experts to create programing for students to experience more hands on STEM learning and explore careers in STEM. The out come of this were STEM field trips, recruitment of Chief Science Officers, classroom STEM experiences and the funding of a Coding CAFE.

School Connect hosted our 3rd Annual Champions of Education Awards Event where we honored, students, teachers, principals, school board members and community partners who worked together strategically to impact academic outcomes and career opportunities.

Over the past 4 years School Connect has started it's model in 8 other cities across the United States: Lafayette, LA, San Antonio, TX, Fort Wayne, IN, Little Rock, AR, Oklahoma City, OK, Colorado Springs, CO, Appleton, WI & Orange County, CA.