Parent Involvement workshop (national PTA and MassPIRC)

Moving from parent involvement to family and community engagement
"need everybody"

• From random acts to systemic movement: families across the board are involved, not just the ones that show up
• events-driven to outcome oriented: doing it all the time, focused on improvement
• add-ons to integrated: it needs to be part of everything. In RTTT, "where is the family engagement? Don't assume it's a given. Make sure it's in there."
• compliance to innovative: Title I schools have to do particular things ("we're not so good to make sure they're doing it"), but need to move beyond that. "Social media is mushrooming...we need to be doing that."

"there are ways that families can be involved in education..valuing education, making sure that kids show up ready to learn..small scale, large scale..Parents have to feel welcomed..it's the school's responsibility to be welcoming...starts right at the door."

"A shared responsibility"...we all have to do it
"continuous across the child's life" from very young children, and how does it change as the child grows?
carried out everywhere that children are (not just in school)
"a lot of the families we want to reach are not comfortable at their child's school"
Five targeted school districts:

1. Boston
2. Worcester
3. Lawrence
4. Holyoke
5. Springfield

What can we really help with what's going on?
raising awareness and commitment to family and community engagement
partnering with others
work with Level 4 schools
Less than 25% of households in the US have kids in K-12
"people are making decisions based on what school was like since they were there"
"When families are invovled, at home and at school, children do better in school."
THAT DOES NOT MEAN FUNDRAISING.
There's no research showing that fundraising actually helps kids do better in school.
People have less time for volunteering, and fundraising totally turns them off: it's why they don't go to meetings, it's why they don't get involved. They want to DO SOMETHING.
No matter what their family income or background, if parents are involved, kids are more likely to get to school regularly, have better social skills, do better in school, and go on in education.
Parents of diverse backgrounds may not contact the school, may have had negative experiences in schools, and may feel that you have power over them.
Parents are more likely to get involved when they understand that they should be involved (regardless of education level or experience), feel that they are ABLE to contribute, and feel invited by school and their kids.
What does it look like in the field?

• Welcoming to all families: from how the building looks to who greets them and how
• Communicating effectively: TWO WAY--regular, informative, and accessible. Do you go to them if necessary?
• supporting student success: strengthen skills and knowledge so parents know how to help. Do a panel discussion on homework.
• speaking up for every child: are parents enpowered to advocate for their and other children? Do school leadership want and welcome parents' being part of decision making?
• sharing power (with families): parents as EQUAL partners. We have to share the knowledge so they can make good decisions.
• collaborating with community: all about families connection schools, staff, local community to expand learning.

Up on the PTA website is an implementation guide on family-school partnerships. There's also surveys, results from surveys on how you're doing.
Three for Me: three hours in the course of a school year for their school