Roles & Responsibilities · The Savio Standard

These are the roles of a community adopting the framework — not the roles of the project itself. A Savio Community is an independent, self-organizing group of parents at one school; the roles below are how such a community organizes its own work. The project behind the framework has its own, separate roles — the steward (the organization holding the project’s rights) and the maintainers (the people who tend the content repository) — described in Why a Steward? and CONTRIBUTING.md. At the pilot school the same people may wear hats from both lists; the hats remain different hats.

Every role below is a volunteer role, designed to be done in a few hours a week or less, with a defined term and a written description — because ministries built on heroic individuals die in year three, and because a role with edges is easier to say yes to. Two duties are written into every role: inclusion first (every event open to all, every invitation to everyone, and eyes always on the family at the edges) and no gossip (no role may ever be used to discuss a specific family’s situation).

The Director, Assistant Director, Communications Coordinator, and Events Coordinator together form the community’s leadership team — what the strategic plan calls the School Leads.

Director

The pitch. Someone has to hold the whole thing — not do the whole thing, hold it. The Director is the person who makes sure the covenant gets launched, the formation nights happen, the Hosts get recruited, and the project stays true to its own guardrails. If you’ve ever looked at your school and thought someone should really organize the parents, congratulations: you’re the someone.

You will: set the year’s calendar (kickoff night, eight formation sessions, all-school socials); hold the covenant mechanics for the school (signatures, grade activations, annual renewal); be the project’s face to the pastor and, when the day comes, the school; support every other role and fill gaps until they’re filled; and guard the guardrails — including shutting down gossip on the spot, every time.

You will not: run every event yourself, adjudicate conflicts between families, or speak ill of the school. Ever.

Time & term: 3–4 hours/week in season, less in summer. Two-year term; your last duty is preparing your successor.

You’re right for this if: people already ask you to organize things; you can be direct without being sharp; and you can champion something publicly before it’s popular.

Assistant Director

The pitch. The Director holds the whole; you make the halves actually work. The Assistant Director is the operations half of the leadership team — the person who turns “we should have a formation night in November” into a room, a speaker, a sign-up sheet, and forty parents who knew about it. Also the continuity plan: assistants become the next Directors.

You will: recruit and support Homeroom Hosts each fall as class lists come out, and check in with them mid-year; keep the role descriptions and playbooks current in the repository; support the Events and Communications Coordinators wherever their loads peak; and stand in for the Director wherever needed.

Time & term: 2–3 hours/week in season. Two-year term, deliberately offset from the Director’s so leadership never turns over all at once.

You’re right for this if: you’re the person whose events simply work; you like making other volunteers successful; and you might be willing to be Director someday but want to see the machine first.

Communications Coordinator

The pitch. A movement that doesn’t communicate is a committee — but communication here is deliberately light. No newsletter, no content channel, no weekly anything: the content library carries the teaching. Your job is that families hear about things early, know what’s coming, and occasionally get asked what they think. Done well, this role is nearly invisible — events are simply full, and nobody can remember not knowing about them.

You will: publish the year’s calendar early and announce each event twice (a couple of weeks out, and a reminder); maintain the mailing list and make sure every communication reaches every family — the list is the inclusion tool; run the occasional short survey, including the annual parent climate survey that is the project’s main measurement instrument; and route feedback and content suggestions back to the repository.

You will not: run a newsletter or content channel; use project channels for anything about a specific family or child, or for school politics. The channel is for events, logistics, and the occasional question — nothing else.

Time & term: a couple of hours a month, a bit more around events and the survey. Two-year term.

You’re right for this if: you write clearly and briefly, you send things on time, and you’d rather send six emails a year that everyone reads than fifty that no one does.

Events Coordinator

The pitch. Formation nights, the kickoff, the all-school socials — someone has to make the room exist. The Events Coordinator is that someone: small role, disproportionate impact, because an event that runs smoothly is invisible and an event that doesn’t is all anyone remembers. You make the calendar real.

You will: schedule the year’s events with the Director and get dates on the calendar early; reserve locations (parish hall when available, homes and parks when not); line up presenters for formation nights — from within the community or beyond it — and make sure they have the session materials from the content library; arrange the practical bones of each event (seating, sign-in, refreshments, childcare where offered, setup and teardown volunteers); and hand the details to the Communications Coordinator in time to announce them properly.

You will not: create the content — sessions and materials come from the content library, and presenters teach it; or run every event alone — recruiting a setup crew is the job done right.

Time & term: 1–2 hours/week in season, concentrated around event dates. Two-year term.

You’re right for this if: you think in checklists, book things early, and get quiet satisfaction from a room that was ready twenty minutes before anyone arrived.

Facilitator

The pitch. When a conversation between two families gets stuck, someone trusted has to hold the room. Facilitators are the project’s safety net: trained volunteers who host a structured, confidential conversation between two sets of parents and guide it to small written agreements. It is the most demanding role in the project, and the most quietly heroic — nobody will ever know what you prevented, including you.

You will: complete a day of training (restorative practice, de-escalation, scope and refusal); take cases as they come — most facilitators see a handful a year; run intake calls, host meetings, and hold follow-ups per the Facilitator Onboarding Guide; keep the bright lines absolutely (no verdicts, no records, nothing leaves the room, safeguarding overrides everything); and debrief process-only with the bench.

You will not: adjudicate, keep case files, discuss cases with anyone (including leadership), or accept cases outside your scope or your neutrality.

Time & term: episodic — a training day, then roughly 3–5 hours per case, a few cases a year. Two-year term on the bench.

You’re right for this if: the community already trusts you with hard things; you can hear one compelling side of a story and notice you’ve only heard one side; and you can keep a confidence from everyone, including your spouse.

Homeroom Host

The pitch. This is where the whole project actually happens. Your child’s homeroom is their entire social world this year — twenty-some kids, twenty-some families — and it re-shuffles every fall. Hosts are the two or three families per room who keep the Savio culture alive in that room: the covenant’s standard present among the parents, the shared language in use, every family known and welcomed, and the early signs of trouble noticed while they’re still small. You are not the room’s party planner; you are the keeper of its culture — though a shared meal is still the oldest tool there is for building one.

You will: keep the covenant’s culture present in the room — model the standard, use the shared language, and gently remind the room’s parents (and by extension their kids) what we’ve all committed to; personally welcome families new to the school or the room, and make sure every single family is known and included (one family left on the outskirts is a clique by accident — noticing them is the core of the role); quietly connect parents whose kids are becoming friends — or becoming a problem — because those are exactly the relationships the covenant runs on; and coordinate a simple gathering for the room’s families near the start of the year, and at least one more in the second half — nothing fancy, a park afternoon or a pizza night, with every family invited every time.

You will not: curate a guest list, ever; collect money beyond splitting a pizza; act as the room’s conflict referee (that’s what the protocol and facilitators are for); or turn the role into a platform for anything else.

Time & term: a couple of hours a month in ordinary time, plus the gatherings. One school year — rooms re-form each fall, and so do Hosts. Serving multiple years in a row is welcome; by design, over nine years most families will host at least once.

You’re right for this if: you notice who wasn’t there; parents already talk to you; and you’d rather include one family on the outskirts than impress ten in the middle.

How roles are filled

Leadership roles (Director, Assistant Director, Communications Coordinator, Events Coordinator) are commissioned at the year-end formation session; Facilitators join the bench after training; Homeroom Hosts are recruited by the Assistant Director each fall as class lists come out — with a simple ask: “Would your family help keep your kid’s homeroom a place where every family belongs? A gathering in the fall, another in the spring, and eyes on the room in between — you’d be great at it.” Most people say yes to that. That’s the point: every role in this project is designed to be sayable-yes-to.