Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

7-2022

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1165-1282

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Christie Bledsoe

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Mary Christopher

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Mark Weatherly

Abstract

Schools receive support in the form of partnerships with organizations such as businesses, churches, and non-profits for many reasons, and such partnerships are beneficial to students and the school community. The purpose of this participatory qualitative study was to determine behaviors of elementary school principals that result in the sustainability of school-community partnerships beyond the initial year of implementation. Elementary school principals in an urban public school district in North Texas were interviewed along with leaders from their corresponding community partners to determine the role of the principal in school-community partnership work. Through an in-depth analysis of interview transcripts, the following four themes emerged: school culture, principal availability, consistent communication, and flexibility. The results of this study indicate that principals who set a welcoming school culture, are visible and available to the community, communicate consistently using a variety of methods, and are flexible in response to changing needs of organizations and other stakeholders can positively impact the long-term sustainability of school-community partnerships.

Keywords: school-community partnership, leadership, qualitative participatory research, sustainability, principal

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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