FACE Center Celebrated with Ribbon-Cutting Event

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Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tue., Nov. 29, 2022, to mark the opening of the new ACPS Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Center on the sixth floor of Ferdinand T. Day Elementary School. The event celebrated the location’s opening as well as the work our FACE team carries out each day. Community dignitaries and elected officials were in attendance, including Alexandria City School Board Members Tammy Ignacio and Dr. Michelle Rief, as well as Alexandria City Council Members Canek Aguirre and Alyia Gaskins. ACPS Interim Superintendent Dr. Melanie Kay-Wyatt, FACE Manager Krishna Leyva and Chief of School and Community Relations Julia Burgos addressed the gathering, as well as family members who have benefited from FACE programming.

“Here at the new FACE Center, our team’s outreach to ACPS families will continue to grow as it engages families in meaningful opportunities designed to support student academic success and healthy social-emotional development,” Dr. Kay-Wyatt said. “Our FACE team’s efforts strengthen family-school partnerships as it works to increase two-way communication, cultural understanding and academic achievement.”

FACE manager Krishna Leyva described the years of work needed to reach the point of the Center’s opening — which had been delayed due to the pandemic — and added that it is essential to keep in mind that “family engagement is not a program, it’s a practice.”

Rosa Landeros, the family liaison at Mount Vernon Community School and a Living Legend of Alexandria, also offered her perspective from more than 25 years of service at ACPS on the importance of prioritizing family-school partnerships. She emphasized that it “takes a village” to help our students achieve academic success and shared her pride in how the new FACE Center represents the strong commitment that ACPS has made to helping families.

FACE assists in carrying out the school division’s mission of family engagement by providing language-specific and bilingual family liaisons who serve our Amharic, Arabic and Spanish speaking families. The FACE Center serves as the home base for these family liaisons as they help build authentic relationships as the foundation of the division’s work with families and the community. At the Center, needed resources are also provided to all ACPS families, along with workshops and other activities that support educational achievement and overall quality of life.