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.

What a first year needs

Not all six at once. A community’s first year needs three of these roles filled and no more:

Role	First year?
Director	Yes — someone has to hold it
Assistant Director	Yes — so it never rests on one person, and so there is a successor
Homeroom Host	Yes — one or two families per room to be the room’s point of contact, recruited as class lists land in the fall
Communications Coordinator	Not yet — the Director and Assistant can hold this between them. A calendar published early and each event announced twice is the whole job at this stage
Events Coordinator	Not yet — a first year has a kickoff and a couple of homeroom gatherings, not a season of events
Facilitator	Not yet — year two. The protocol is published and usable by any family from day one; a trained bench is the escalation path, and escalations are rare early

Filling all six in year one is not ambitious, it is fragile. Add roles when the work exists to justify them.

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 pledge 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 pledge 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. The Host is the family in that room who is the point of contact for the Savio Standard: the one who makes sure every family has heard of the pledge and had a fair chance to sign it, and who keeps an eye on the room so no family sits at the edges unnoticed.

How you do that is up to you. People lead out of different charisms. Some Hosts are writers and do it in a few warm, well-timed emails. Some are connectors and do it one conversation at a time at pickup. Some are hosts in the literal sense and throw a pizza night. All of those are the role done well. What matters is that the room’s families know this exists, know who to ask about it, and know somebody is glad they are there.

You will: introduce yourself to the room as its Savio Standard contact, explain briefly what it is, and invite families to read the pledge and sign it if it is for them; follow up once or twice over the first weeks so it does not get lost in the fall inbox; personally welcome families new to the school or the room; keep an eye out for the family nobody has connected with yet — noticing them is the core of the role; and quietly connect parents whose kids are becoming friends, or becoming a problem, because those are exactly the relationships the pledge runs on.

You may, if it suits you: gather the room’s families — a park afternoon, a pizza night, coffee after drop-off. A shared meal is still the oldest tool there is for building a culture, and it is genuinely wonderful when it happens. It is a nice-to-have, not a duty, and no Host should decline the role because they do not want to plan a party.

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

Time & term: an hour or two a month, concentrated in the fall when the room is forming. 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 be the point of contact for your kid’s homeroom this year — making sure everyone hears about the pledge, and keeping an eye out for the family at the edges? However you want to do it. 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.