Creating Family Friendly Schools
Do you want to boost student achievement, improve attendance rates, and encourage more students to stay in school? Would you like more support for school-improvement initiatives and meaningful after school programs? Are you interested in enhancing the educational experience for all students?Then you want to increase parent and community involvement in your district or school. Here are three solid strategies that can help you do just that.

#1. Provide the leadership. As a school or district leader, it’s important to put action behind the words. All stakeholders should be aware that collaboration and communication between schools and families is a priority. Set goals for building better relationships with families and community members, advises Sam Bartlett, CEO of Family Friendly Schools. Keep track of progress and publish results, he continues, noting that "what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get changed."

#2. Involve all stakeholders

. From building principals to teachers; parents to local store owners;everyone can contribute to a child's education. Support staff, for example, "are a critical link and often the first person parents see in the morning," says Bartlett. Consider how Jimmy Murley, a school bus driver in Waxahachie, Texas, made a difference: Murley instituted the "Reading Riders R Rewarded" program which awarded prizes to those students who agreed to read books and give reports about what they’d read to their fellow bus riders. His purpose for the program, Bartlett states, was to encourage the students to activate their minds and complete their required reading assignments. The result: "Reading scores in the district went up," says Bartlett.

#3. Make no assumptions

. When educators reach out to parents and families and they don’t respond, a natural reaction is to deduce that parents just don’t care. That was the situation at Granger High School when Richard Esparza became principal in 1999. This high-poverty school with the highest crime rate in the Yakima Valley (Washington State) also had the fewest number of parents involved in school activities. Esparza didn’t accept the excuse that "parents didn’t care." Instead, he motivated his teachers and staff to help "remove the obstacles that get in the way of involvement." In his first year as principal, for example, Esparza organized teams of adults from the school and community to visit the homes of every student in the district. "We needed to teach parents how education works and how they could support learning at home," he says. Eight years later, in 2008, the school realized 100 percent parental participation, and that, says Esparza, led to a dramatic increase in the number of students reading at grade level and a 90 percent graduation rate.

Strategies for Increasing Parental and Community Involvement

Engaging all stakeholders in supporting your school is no easy task. Fortunately, educators are always willing to share what works best. Here is a collection of ideas from those who attended the S2H Webinar, Creating Success through Family Involvement:

  • Build awareness from the beginning. Encourage university teacher preparation programs to offer classes in parental engagement and customer service. Recommend to teachers advanced degrees to focus on parental and community engagement as their Master's project.
  • Hold a "Bring Your Parents to School" day. Have parents come to school with their child and attend classes in the morning. Provide lunch for parents who attend. Make sure to put the day on the district calendar as an annual event. That way, school administrators will remember to work the event into their school planning.
  • Teach parents how to support education outside the school building. Share tips on ways parents can work with students at home; how they can access school information; how they can show that they are positive about the learning process; and so on.
  • Provide parent training on Saturdays for those parents who are not able to attend during the week. Collaborate with the community so you can provide refreshments, free-of-charge.
  • Use grant money to create a Family Academy, to be held, for example, on every Saturday for 7 weeks. Give parents empowerment training and bring in community resources that may help families. At the same time, provide students with college awareness and readiness training.

 

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