Parent Summit might require a lot of coordination and doing things on a large scale. If we are thinking of hosting parents, teachers, students at the Central Library. We definitely need to look into major corporations/donors support. It will be pretty similar to doing a Comic Age Festival. We need to work with Teen'Scape and Children Literature to make sure programs that will run all day to entertain the youth. We need to make sure these elements are there: staffing, security, funding, programs, working with LAUSD (sending out notice to parents/students), materials, incentives, major attractions (keynote speaker), etc.
So the Parent Summit (Family Fun Fair, or whatever we call it) is the most expensive item? If it is, then it gets shunted to the bottom of the list in terms of feasibility. But we also want to know how effective it is in realizing our goals. For that, I believe it is in the top-half.
I think this summit gets put to the top of the list as a Foundation item. This is an easy sell for the Foundation especially if we are talking about an annual event. It seems all of out marketing is wrapped up in this and a lot of our outreach. Yes, it is expensive, but that is what the Foundation is for.
Cheryl is right. We only need to find a corporation/vendor to underwrite the expenses. It will reach out to so many people if we host this at central. Our target audience will be both parents and students.
I hear what James is saying about the Parent Summit being a one time or annual event. However, it would be an opportunity to educate parents about the resources available at the library including homework help centers, tutoring etc. This then would hopefully encourage them to come back to the library and to visit their community branches to make use of the resources. As far as reaching those that might not be able to attend a large event at Central, what about providing buses from some of the branches or regional branches? We do this with Student Smart from the schools and , if I'm not mistaken, we provided buses for another event years ago that took place at central from local branches. Yes, this costs money but as Cheryl pointed out that's where the Foundation comes in. Once at Central we could provide families with MTA bus tokens for the journey back home. This way we don't have to hold onto the private buses all day as this could prove costly. It will obviously have to be done on some kind of sign-up or lottery basis. However, it's an idea for getting people to the event that might not otherwise be able to get to Central Library for the Parent Summit.
I am, of course, not saying that the Parent Summit shouldn't be done. It is certainly a worthwhile event. However, the homework help centers should have a higher priority. That's what I'm contending for.