Family & Community

Family & Community Engagement Guide

IntroductionIt’s no secret that schools and families working together as partners increases student success. After all, family and community engagement is a shared responsibility between all parties, and everyone plays a role in supporting positive child and adolescent development and academic growth.

Legislatively, we’ve seen an increase at the federal, state, and local levels of mandates supporting and enforcing family engagement policies, working to get parents more involved. In this respect, school leaders shoulder the burden of proof of establishing and implementing these policies – especially when accepting federal money (ie. Title I, Title III, etc.).

“In order to receive Title I funds, districts must conduct outreach to parents and family members and must implement programs, activities, and procedures for the involvement of parents and families in Title I-funded activities” (The Leadership Conference Education Fund).

While we might have a handful of consistently engaged parents, figuring out a way to engage all parents, or a great percentage, can feel like a daunting task. How do you entice families to come to meetings and conferences? How do you keep them participating in activities and events? How do you get the community engaged with supporting the schools and families? These are challenges every district faces. The goal of this guide is to help you plan and implement an engagement plan that will get parents in the doors and keep them coming back.

From welcoming families to the district and to a new school year, to closing out the year with reflection, and with frequent opportunities for engagement and education throughout, a strong partnership will lift up the district and community together.


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Organization & How-to-UseThis guide has been organized into three main sections that contribute to family and community engagement: 1) Connecting with Your School Community; 2) Communicating with All Parents; and 3) Coordinating for Support and Participation.

As you read through each section, we encourage you to self-evaluate and reflect upon the current engagement policies and programs in your district for each concept.

At the end of this guide you will find a checklist that summarizes the section concepts into ‘9 Steps for Success’. Print it and use the space under each of the nine steps to brainstorm ideas you’d like to see explored and/or implemented in your building. You may even want to identify your district’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) towards establishing and maintaining strong family engagement programs around these concepts. Are there opportunities for short-term implementation and success, or are you finding more long-term strategies for your programs? Every district is different, so make this toolkit your own!


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Connecting with Your School Community

Create a Welcoming EnvironmentWhether parents are new to the district or not, they want to feel welcomed and seen as a valued partner in their child’s education. Beyond the orientation handbooks, schools can establish a positive, welcoming environment with things such as:

• Sending a welcome video to all students and parents before the school year starts so they know what to expect

• Creating a place where parents can find resources just for them (like a family engagement room)

• Posting ‘Welcome’ signs in various languages spoken by families in your district.• Making ELL parents feel welcome by speaking their language (or using a digital

platform to help with this).

Safety, Security, and PrivacyTaking student privacy seriously is something all schools do. And reiterating that to parents and guardians is something that can help bolster transparency and a sense of commitment, safety, and security, within your family and community partnerships. This can have an added benefit when students are aware that you have measures in place and take action on issues, like bullying, seriously. Provide families with information on how your programs and technology align with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Additionally, share with families your technology policies handbook, media release policies, etc. If you’re looking for a family night activity, create a family tech night that educates parents around security and what the district does to support privacy and safety.

Family Engagement CommitteeDepending on the size of your school, you can establish a separate family engagement committee from a volunteer committee, or combine the two into one. The purpose of this group is to build excitement and be highly creative in brainstorming ways to engage families and keep them consistently involved. Committee members are the organizers of various family engagement events.

They are the community outreach point of contact and establish, implement, and maintain your rewards program (more on that later). Have members of your


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family engagement committee organize activities and information for each family engagement night or event. Make it a big deal. This can also be in collaboration with your PTO/PTA. Establish communication channels and send invitations with meeting agendas.

Family SupportA facet sometimes overlooked when establishing strong family engagement policies is the family education component. Educating families about important topics that will benefit children is a step every great policy should take. For example, if we’re trying to teach students about making healthy eating decisions in school, but parents are struggling to understand how to encourage healthy eating habits at home, we’ll be doing students a disservice. Building in family education nights is a great way to build upon that trust and partnership with parents. You can establish monthly Family Support Nights, using a mobile app like Bloomz to organize all parent communication in one place. Topics for Family Support Nights might include:

• August/September: Transitioning from Summer to School: Welcome Back! • September/October: Tech Safety and Awareness Night• February: Overcoming Test Anxiety• May/June: Summer Activities that Promote Learning

Establish a Rewards Plan!We all love free things, right?! Think about how powerful the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program has been for kids. Well, rewards work for all ages. Create a program that rewards families for their engagement and participation. Every time a family attends an event they get a card punch that can be redeemed for a reward or goes into a drawing. The rewards plan could also be organized by class, so that teachers could track parent’s rewards through Bloomz.

Ask for RewardsYou can’t have a rewards plan without the rewards! First, ask different local businesses if they would be willing to give away prizes like discount coupons or free classes to be part of your rewards program. These could become door prizes or be part of a larger end-of-year or bi-annual drawing for families who’ve attended ‘x’ number of family engagement events.

Next, ask your PTO/PTA and parents for donations. Maybe Sawyer’s dad is a woodworker and would be willing to donate a craft for a raffle. And freebies don’t have to be tangible objects, they can also be time. Hobbyist parents could offer free after-school classes.


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Communicating With All ParentsEstablishing two-way communication is a cornerstone of a solid family engagement plan. It allows for interactive conversations and feedback between home and school, and can help families feel a greater sense of trust that everyone is working towards the common goal of student success.

The key to ongoing communication is meeting parents where they are. And for today’s parents, that most often means their phones. Teachers and schools can also get creative and leverage more tech-savvy methods of communication such as:

• Communicating via one single-source for all school information. A mobile app such as Bloomz provides all the tools to really unify all communication.

• Creating classroom blogs if you want to keep a more open channel, however post links to them in your one-source of information app, and keep more private information away from public forums and social media.

• Creating a podcast series (potentially student-run),• If your school has the tech capabilities, starting a student-run ‘news’ update

video series or live-stream to keep parents informed of the happenings around the school

• Creating a photo wall to showcase events for individual classrooms and the school as a whole (bonus points for turning students into the photographers!)

• Having students create digital postcards to send home• Creating a weekly digital newsletter sharing school ‘wins’

TransparencyWe know that transparency ultimately translates to trust, and while school leaders often do a great job keeping parents involved and informed on the ‘what’, there may be room for improvement regarding the ‘why’. For example, while parents know there is a budget, they might not know what is at stake for their children. One feature offered by Bloomz is Student Portfolios, digital streams where teachers can post the work and progress of their students on a daily basis. Transparency can go a long way in building strong relationships, and even create a greater sense of support and calm emotions during the ‘tough’ times. Establishing family engagement with a sense of open communication will win parents over and build better partnerships.


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Involve Your Parent OrganizationFamily engagement has been the core of the National Parent Teacher Association (National PTA®) since it was founded in 1897. Most recently, through advocacy and effective campaigning, the National PTA has successfully made family and parent engagement an integral component of the decision-making process in school and community programs and legislation including the Statewide Family Engagement Centers program in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The National PTA champions for creating strong, lasting, beneficial school and family partnerships and advocates for increased funding for public schools. Establishing strong partnerships with your school and/or district’s PTA / PTO is a must for creating advocates in students, teachers, parents and families, school leaders, and the community as a whole.

Use Surveys for Feedback and AdjustmentsWe know having a great family engagement plan in place is essential, but how do we know if it’s effective, purposeful, and hits on all requirements? Make sure to have feedback cards at every family engagement event in order to establish whether or not particular activities were valuable for parents and where there may be room for improvement. If possible, gather both quantitative and qualitative data. Some other questions to ask yourself include:

• Do family engagement events support ESL families?• Do events support parents with varied working hours?• Are there two-way communication offerings? • Are there events that support diversity, celebrate different cultures, engage

families and students with disabilities, etc.?

There are multiple online services that provide easy tools to survey parents on an annual or semi-annual basis as well. You can create them and then distribute the link digitally through email or your mobile school communication app.


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Coordinating for Support and ParticipationKeeping a common, open, current calendar for the whole school is key for parent awareness and participation. Open up this calendar at the beginning of the year and keep it updated throughout it. Bonus points if you use a digital tool like Bloomz that can integrate the school calendar with the different classroom events for the appropriate parent groups.

Leverage Resources from your CommunityCommunity resources, ready to support their neighborhood schools, are all around us. Many businesses support social initiatives and offer employees paid volunteering opportunities. Check around the community to see what businesses would support volunteer reading buddy programs, host a family education night, or come talk to highschool students during lunch about different career fields.

Ask community partners to host Community Enrichment Activities, such as:• Free Adult English Classes• Health & Nutrition Classes (from a local chef)• Violence and Bullying Prevention (get the fire and police departments involved)• Financial Literacy for Parents (invite a bank representative)

Ask teachers to host short Family Education Night sessions on topics on which they are experts, whether academic, social, or personal, such as:

• Time Management • Preparing for Tests• Online Safety and

Security• College and Career

Readiness


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Volunteer Engagement CommitteeMost schools delegate teachers to be part of various committees and school representatives. If your school doesn’t have a current committee dedicated to volunteer coordination, this may be something worth considering. A small group of members (including support staff) can help to establish volunteer guidelines, train volunteers on expectations, be the point of contact for parents, guardians, and community members seeking to volunteer, and even act as community outreach partners seeking volunteers from the community.

And don’t forget to reach out to your local colleges and/or universities. College students are always looking for volunteer opportunities to put on their resumes. Give them something to be excited about and proud to be a part of!

Make Parent-Teacher Conferences Easy and AccessibleBy using a digital platform to invite, schedule and run conferences, you can simplify the flow greatly and make this time less stressful for both parents and teachers. Send digital invitations through a mobile app like Bloomz so parents can sign up digitally. Teachers can use this tool to make any adjustments, send reminders and print out a preparation sheet for the day of the conferences.


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Family Engagement Checklist: 9 Steps for Success

1. Establish Your Channels for Two-way Communication

2. Create a Welcoming Environment

3. Organize a Volunteer and/or Family Engagement Committee(s)

4. Develop a Family Engagement Rewards Program

5. Plan Your Calendar of Family Engagement Events

6. Identify ways to get ESL families involved

7. Ask for family support

8. Ask for community support

9. Establish how you will gather feedback to make adjustments

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21 Programs, Activities, and Ideas for Family Engagement

1. Host storytelling nights for students and parents

2. Create literacy “backpacks” for at-home reading

3. Invite a guest author for a book reading

4. Host a physical fitness challenge for families on a Saturday

5. Serve Pastries for Parents and invite a local bakery to host and serve

6. Host an ice cream social

7. Organize a Family Cultural Night to celebrate the diversity in your

schools

8. Have high school students create an “Escape Room” and invite parents

to join them

9. Host tailgating nights and/or Saturday to celebrate different sports

10. Organize a celebration of Earth Day

11. Ask a local artist to host a Painting with Parents night

12. Invite volunteers to sponsor a pizza and board game night

13. Host a community safety event and invite local firefighters and police

officers

14. Organize an Astronomy Night with themed snacks

15. Invite parent volunteers to host a “green thumb” night to teach about

gardening

16. Invite parent volunteers who love to cook to do a healthy cooking night

17. Host a financial literacy night, for both students and parents

18. Host a summer support vendor fair and showcase local businesses and

their activities that families can tap into over the summer

19. Offer an early reading morning for kids whose parents have to be to

work early

20. Organize a Saturday career day—led by students

21. Invite parents and guardians to have lunch with students


*Pro Tip: Use a digital platform like Bloomz

to communicate and engage parents in an easy, fun way.

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Family & Community

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