Two years after President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law, the new federal policy that pushes educational authority back to the states is on track to be implemented in most states this year. And as part of that decentralization, parents and families are positioned to see a surge in power over schools in their communities.

Among numerous new provisions, stipulates that districts must allocate at least 1 percent of their 鈥� federal dollars granted to high-poverty districts and schools 鈥� to engaging parents and families. (Except for districts for which 1 percent of that grant is $5,000 or less.) State ESSA plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education for approval, in which education departments were required to incorporate parent input, were required to include a written policy on engagement, as well as expectations and objectives on how districts statewide will involve parents and families. State agencies were also required to present intended metrics for assessing whether those efforts are yielding positive results for students.

To better understand what should be incorporated in these plans, what they could 鈥� and should 鈥� look like, 蜜桃影视 sought input from the experts in the matter: parents. We tapped parents from across the country, hailing from districts urban and rural, privileged and impoverished, to learn more about what works, what doesn鈥檛, and what can be done better to engage parents and families in authentic, meaningful, and effective ways that promote student success.

Click through the chart below to read what our panel of experts had to say about how to bring parents, families, and communities together to create the best educational environments for children across all ZIP codes.

As a mother of two school-age children who attend a charter school in Colorado鈥檚 Roaring Fork Valley, I often find myself wondering if I鈥檓 doing all that it takes to ensure their needs are met, that they are where they need to be academically, and whether I鈥檓 doing enough to support their school through participation and volunteering.

We are a multicultural and multilingual family. My husband and I came to the United States more than 20 years ago and became naturalized citizens, though our children were both born here. To all of us, this is home. This is where we live, where we work, and where our children are being raised; this is where we want to invest our money and our efforts, and this is where we want to work hard to help build a community.

There are very specific needs in terms of community engagement in the Roaring Fork Valley. We have a big Latino community where parents and children have access to services and education, but they don鈥檛 always know about all the services that are available to them. Although there are great organizations like the and working on bridging the cultural gap, it is still evident that more effective tools are needed for a more unified community.

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There are particular concerns to each family, each teacher, and each school, and there is not one single approach that will work for all. It鈥檚 extremely important that families learn to navigate the school system, that they become familiar with the services offered, and they must even learn to advocate for themselves.

This is where Title I funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act can propel school and student performance by investing in family engagement. But the key to that success is ensuring that the money isn鈥檛 just spent, but spent well.

My children鈥檚 school was, for a long time, struggling to attain parent participation. Through the creation of 鈥淰illage Meetings鈥� that take place once a month, where parents are encouraged to discuss their struggles and particular concerns, the school was able to increase parent participation significantly. When no participation from Latino families was evident, the school鈥檚 principal invited each family to a special 鈥淟atino Night.鈥� Every family showed up.

Sometimes a phone call reminder is needed, special classes must be offered, surveys have to be created. Every step taken, every dollar well spent, will get us closer to our goal: a tight community where everyone feels at home.

Although my perspective is one from an immigrant, I have met many parents from all cultural and financial backgrounds who do not feel as though enough effort is being made to provide said learning and community-building opportunities.

Our community continues to grow, and with it the need for strategies to maximize participation and engagement. Based on successful stories from programs like VSP, it鈥檚 become clear to me that when resources are used effectively, parents are better informed and are more willing to participate in their children鈥檚 schools and the community at large.

It鈥檚 not only about those resources and information being available, but also about making sure professionals and parents are appropriately trained, that they are adequately supported, and that they are constantly being encouraged to do more in, and for, their community.

And who will benefit from this? Our children most definitely will.

Andrea Suarez was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico, where she majored in social communications. She now lives in Carbondale, Colorado, with her husband, their two wild boys, and their sassy dog. She first moved to the valley in 1996 with the intention of skiing for a few months while practicing English, but fell in love with the wonderful community and the breathtaking beauty of the mountains. She believes in the importance of kindness, the wisdom of children, and the magical power of love! It is her desire to help support and empower children and families through information, compassion, and love.

Family-school-community partnering is imperative for student learning. This seems like not only an obvious observation but also a straightforward idea to implement and maintain. But for too long, many school districts have been ambiguous about how to define family engagement, which has left this critical issue poorly addressed.

As states begin to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act and begin to roll out parent engagement programs under Title I, I encourage them to look to districts that are being fastidious about, and have been successful in, making parent engagement a priority. Roaring Fork Schools (RFS), located in the Colorado mountains, is moving beyond the simple potlucks and holiday choir concerts to actions that truly accelerate student learning.

RFS staff are being trained on family engagement beginning with parent-teacher home visits, because we know that home visits are one of the most powerful ways to create powerful relationships between parents, students, and their teachers. My children have had regular home visits for years, even from teachers who no longer have my children in their classrooms.

Those home visits have morphed into dinner invitations, summer tutoring, and old-fashioned pen pal relationships. Perhaps the pinnacle of home visits is when a student has a chance to proudly boast their current academic successes to a former teacher 鈥� and they didn鈥檛 even have to hunt that teacher down to do it.

Having teachers go into students鈥� homes is highly important, but there鈥檚 an equal imperative to get the families into their children鈥檚 schools on a regular basis. Home and school visits are a multicultural exchange. Beliefs and priorities are mutually communicated and the tri-partnership between parents, students, and schools is steadily reinforced.

(Click through the grid below to read other parent perspectives)

A marvelous way to get families into classrooms is through regular open houses. Some schools have created monthly Food for Thought nights. Families are served healthy dinners in the school cafeteria 鈥� which takes a load off parents in more ways than one. Breaking bread together is an excellent way for parents to network with one another, and students love having their parents eat with them at school, even if it is not during regular school hours.

With all families gathered together, school administration may deliver a bilingual message, introduce a fundraiser, pass out achievement and behavior awards, and gather feedback through polls and/or voting.

Afterward, families head to their children鈥檚 classrooms to get basic practical details on their student鈥檚 education. Teachers go over things like homework expectations, school and classroom rules, opportunities for classroom observations and volunteering, resources for parents to use with their children at home, and how to best partner with the school when their children are struggling.

Monthly Food for Thought nights cleverly use lower-impact strategies as a platform for higher-impact programming. Using celebrations, potlucks, and fundraisers as loss leaders gives schools the regular face time they need to share data, set goals, schedule home visits, and talk about ways parents can help with learning projects 鈥� the parent engagement work we know supports student success.

While the benefits to the students and parents is rather apparent, what is in it for schools to go so vastly beyond the 8 a.m.鈥�5 p.m. workload? Sure, a high-growth school is an esteemed reward in itself, but a significant portion of funds for family and engagement need to go toward adequately compensating school staff for these higher-impact approaches.

Angela Fullerton is the mother of two school-age children, the family support specialist for the Roaring Fork Schools, and the leader of two troops of Girl Scouts. She has a master鈥檚 in clinical mental health and school counseling. Angela lives with her family in Redstone, Colorado, a 200-resident mountain village.

I live in a township in the middle of New Jersey that鈥檚 home to a culturally and economically diverse school district. That鈥檚 not very common in this state鈥檚 highly segregated school system.

My local stretch of U.S. Route 206 tells the tale: Driving north, you鈥檒l first pass the inner-city school district of Trenton 鈥� where 90 percent of students are economically disadvantaged (i.e., meet the requirements for free or reduced-price lunch, the government鈥檚 proxy for poverty), through my Lawrence, where 24 percent of students fall into that category, and then curl into posh Princeton, where 9 percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged.

The family income piece is critical. Though I handed in my school board hat one year ago, I spent 12 years watching our business administrator count every dollar during budgeting season. In New Jersey, much school funding for middle- and upper-class districts comes from local property taxes. But state and federal funding streams still play an essential role in a district鈥檚 fiscal balancing act. One source of federal money comes courtesy of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which contains 10 titles of funding streams, each loaded with good intentions. Title I is meant to ameliorate socioeconomic inequities.

While Lawrence is no Trenton (allotted over $5 million in Title I money this school year), we鈥檙e also no Princeton, which gets minimal aid. This school year, Lawrence Township Public Schools (LTPS) will receive in Title I funds, and, in a recent tweak to ESSA, 1 percent of that money 鈥� or just under $5,000 鈥� must be spent on engaging parents whose children qualify for free or reduced lunch. That $5,000 may be chump change in the context of a $72 million budget, but increasing parent involvement in schools is essential to student growth.

And so the first question for Lawrence Township Public Schools 鈥� or any other district 鈥� is how to allot those funds earmarked for parent engagement. The second is what the best ways are to evaluate whether we鈥檝e spent this money effectively.

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Some districts might need to initiate programs from scratch, but LTPS already has a robust program in place for parent engagement. Its particular challenge is to draw in more low-income parents and prove to the feds that this $5,000 serves its mandated purpose.

In 2006, Lawrence was in the midst of redesigning its high school, which, truth be told, had seen better days. There were committees. There were vision and mission statements. There were surveys of teachers, parents, and students. And, lucky for us, there was , a highly esteemed education consultant who happened to live in Lawrence and sent her sons to district schools. (Bonus fact: One of her sons is Jon Stewart. Yes, . Seriously.)

Under the direction of Leibowitz, then-Superintendent Phil Meara, and then鈥揂ssistant Superintendent Crystal Edwards, LTPS initiated its first 鈥�.鈥� Envisioned as a forum for soliciting feedback and buy-in for the high school redesign, the program evolved into that engages parents, students, teachers, residents, and taxpayers in an ongoing strategic planning process centered on four goals: fiscal accountability, academic excellence and equity, community engagement, and total child (known by the acronym FACT).

It鈥檚 no small task to lure parents into the high school cafeteria on a school night. (We tried a Saturday morning once, and attendance dropped.) And so the district has in place a variety of enticements, including food, babysitting, student musical performances, and art displays. But the attendees tend to skew higher-income than ESSA鈥檚 new mandate demands. What can Lawrence do to increase attendance among low-income parents?

To add more complexity, that 1 percent of Title I money can be spent on an entire school if 40 percent or more of the students there qualify for free or reduced lunch. If a school meets that benchmark, it鈥檚 considered a 鈥淭itle I school.鈥� Four of LTPS鈥檚 seven schools qualify for that designation. However, in Lawrence鈥檚 three non鈥揟itle I schools, the money must be spent only on low-income families.

Given these constraints, there are five ways LTPS could allot those funds and comply with ESSA:

• Provide busing to and from our affordable-housing neighborhoods, where many of our low-income families reside.

• Offer activities for older children to keep them occupied during Community Conversation, like homework help, arts and crafts, games, or tours of the high school. Staffing could be provided by high school students 鈥� a precursor, perhaps, to expanding our peer mentorship program, and at no cost (community service credit!), erasing the need to determine student income eligibility.

• Market registration more rigorously, with assistance from liaisons to churches, Sikh temples, synagogues, and leaders from our Latino, black, and Polish communities.

• Emphasize outreach within programs that provide support to specific ethnic groups that, in Lawrence, skew low-income, such as the Eagles program (for our Polish families) and Latinos Unidos (for our Hispanic families).

• Provide translations of marketing material and translators during Community Conversation itself. (Lawrence families speak about 50 different languages at home, including Spanish, Polish, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and Chinese.)

Measuring the efficacy of these efforts is where it gets tricky. While the current federal education department, to put it nicely, doesn鈥檛 care much about fiscal accountability, school board members, stewards of their neighbors鈥� tax dollars, should care a lot. Therefore, the district has to establish a baseline by reviewing registrations from previous years. If this initiative for engaging low-income parents is working, LTPS should see:

• An increase in registrations for Community Conversations;

• An increase in registrations for the committees that follow the annual event and meet during the school year;

• An increased need at Community Conversations for translators, transportation, and childcare.

In other words, LTPS should collect historical data, establish benchmarks that indicate success, and measure outcomes.

If done right, Lawrence could help low-income families as well as improve its strategic planning by tapping into the richness of our diverse community. That鈥檚 more exciting than any drive down Route 206.

Laura Waters writes about education politics and policy for , , , and other publications. She was a school board member in Lawrence Township (Mercer County) for 12 years and served nine years as president. She and her husband have four children.

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires school districts to set aside at least 1 percent of their Title I funding for parent engagement. Yet the parent engagement policies we鈥檝e seen rarely reach their potential to improve student success.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, district funds are often spent on programs that teach parents how to support their kids鈥� education at home, to encourage volunteering and respond to parent concerns through parent centers and parent representatives at school sites.

While educating parents and soliciting their feedback on school-site issues is important, authentic parent engagement goes further. Parents need access to the knowledge and tools to engage in policymaking at the district and school board levels, where real power to make positive change resides. We at , a Los Angeles鈥揵ased grassroots organization of parents who want a more powerful voice in education policy, believe that the district should play a role in those efforts.

Parents are generally kept in the dark about how the most important decisions affecting their children鈥檚 education are made. In LAUSD, some of the farthest-reaching policies stem from the collective bargaining agreement between the teachers union (United Teachers Los Angeles) and the school district. These include not only salaries and benefits but also how teachers are assigned to schools and classrooms, the frequency and parameters for their performance evaluations, the criteria for layoffs and dismissals, and parent participation in school leadership councils.

Most parents don鈥檛 know that tenure doesn鈥檛 refer to 鈥�10 years鈥� and are shocked that it takes only 18 months to achieve lifetime job protections in their schools. They are unaware that seniority, rather than performance, determines where teachers teach, how much they make, and whether they are laid off first. They do not know that the contract actually limits their decision-making power on school leadership councils by mandating that teachers make up the majority voting bloc.
(Click through the grid below to read other parent perspectives)

State and district funds can support meaningful parent engagement by allocating funds to shine a light on what the teachers鈥� contract actually contains, and how it relates to the things that have a daily impact on our kids, as well as parents鈥� roles in school-site decisions. The district can do this by holding regular briefings and feedback sessions at parent centers, training parent leaders to share the information with parents at their school sites, and establishing a feedback process for parents to give their input on the contract proposals.

Beyond providing transparent information to parents and soliciting their feedback, however, districts need to give parents real and actual power to make change. Parents are tired of the kind of 鈥渆ngagement鈥� that asks for their input and then promptly ignores it.

One potential way to hold districts accountable for listening to parents on these issues is to give parents a vote to approve or deny the union contracts, and make school board support contingent upon parent approval. To our knowledge, no one has ever tried this before.

For years, the district has operated behind closed doors, largely shutting parents out of the negotiation process. The final collective bargaining agreement has as much impact on kids as it does on the adults who negotiate its terms. But kids don鈥檛 have a union. Kids have parents, and parents are the only advocates with no financial interest motivating their actions. Their sole interest is in the success of their kids, which is, after all, the very purpose of education. Parents have a right to an equal role in the collective bargaining process to ensure that the result puts kids rather than adults first.

There鈥檚 one other way parents can hold the school board accountable for including them and listening to their needs: Get out and vote. Parents did that in , organizing against and unseating the two-term incumbent in District 4 by a landslide. That should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who thinks parents can safely be ignored.

However, a significant percentage of parents in Los Angeles are unable to vote for school board members because of their status as undocumented immigrants. We believe these parents have just as much of a right to have their voices heard when it comes to their kids鈥� education. Any vote to approve or deny union contracts should include all public school parents, including undocumented immigrants.

This would give real power to the most disenfranchised parents, whose kids are often stuck in the lowest-performing schools. LAUSD recently declared itself a safe zone for undocumented immigrants, but families should expect more than just safety. They should expect educational excellence and the power to make it happen.

There is an absolute link between parent involvement and student achievement, and it鈥檚 our responsibility to find a way to make sure parents are a piece of the puzzle of their children鈥檚 academic success. We can think of no better use of federal parent engagement funds than to ensure that parents have full information about, and an equal say in determining, the policies that have the greatest impact on their kids鈥� education.

Parents have been shut out of the process long enough. It鈥檚 time to shift the paradigm from parent engagement to parent power. It is the only way to hold the school district accountable for putting kids first.

Katie Braude is executive director of , a Los Angeles鈥揵ased grassroots organization of parents who want a more powerful voice in education policy.

Chantel Hunter Mah is a family-law and estate-planning attorney from South Los Angeles. Her children currently attend Mark Twain Middle School and Venice High School. She is a member of Speak UP and the Venice Chamber of Commerce’s Education Committee and was formerly employed by LAUSD as a parent/community representative. Additionally, she has served in a variety of school leadership roles, including School Site Council, Local School Leadership Council, and booster club president.

I鈥檝e spent more than 15 years serving on boards of my kids鈥� parent organizations, working concession stands, managing websites, and producing weekly newsletters, in part to help the school but also to ensure each school had minority representation. No one engaged or involved me 鈥� and quite possibly some didn鈥檛 want me.

Numerous studies over several decades illuminate the importance of parents鈥� roles in partnering with schools to successfully educate children, and the history of federal education laws reveals a growing pattern of expectations that parents should be included in the decision-making process.

Educators and policymakers are quick to say parents must be part of the equation, and the Every Student Succeeds Act, like the No Child Left Behind law before it, requires states and schools to figure out a way to make it happen. ESSA even replaces parent 鈥渋nvolvement鈥� with 鈥渆ngagement鈥� in an effort to shepherd efforts toward more meaningful outreach.

In the great state of Tennessee, education officials expertly crafted a plan 鈥� Tennessee Succeeds 鈥� that passed muster on the first round of ESSA submissions. Tucked away somewhere in the middle of Tennessee Succeeds are three and a half pages of promises and best practices to aid districts in effective family outreach. From engaging hard-to-reach families to fostering to nurturing migrant families, Tennessee鈥檚 plan leaves no stone unturned in deciding whom to reach and what programs and funding are required to achieve those goals. Still, even with the best-laid plans, full parent participation is an elusive goal for most schools, particularly in distressed communities.

Even as NCLB and ESSA have ramped up the family engagement conversation with much-needed federal dollars attached to well-meaning edicts, still missing are those things sure to transform rhetoric into reality.

(Click through the grid below to read other parent perspectives)

Education leaders must abstain from the age-old act of making assumptions about certain parents and offer an authentic invitation to partner, make clear requests of parents, and seek to remove barriers to engagement.

Somewhere between law and practice there should be baked into the culture of a school district the notion that parents get equal billing in this 鈥渆ducation thing鈥� 鈥� that parent outreach is not a program but a strategy toward educational excellence.

Intentional inclusion is not one-size-fits-all and requires diverse and innovative approaches. For example, in Chattanooga, two teachers recognized the district鈥檚 inability to reach disadvantaged families, so one of the teachers purchased a bus, equipped it with instructional materials, and hit the road. travels to the communities of their students and provides tutoring and assistance to parents. While recognizing barriers many parents face, these teachers understand the importance of family buy-in and have selflessly invested personal dollars and sweat equity to include families.

Federally funded rolling classrooms staffed by school bus drivers and teachers would make an impact in urban communities and rural districts where students are many miles away from the school. Where there is a will, there is a way.

SchooI districts should be required to provide federally funded literacy training and useful job skills to parents while offering tutoring and other learning opportunities to their children.

Some school districts have entire departments dedicated to parent outreach, while other districts expect their schools and parent organizations to do the heavy lifting. Districts with robust resources dedicated to family engagement typically offer periodic literacy and math events and trainings on the importance of helping with homework. Districts like Nashville go as far as to provide child care, transportation, and meals to boost attendance, to no avail. Additionally, Nashville鈥檚 high-need schools employ the that delivers myriad wraparound services to students and families.

Missing among these endeavors are efforts to increase a parent鈥檚 quality of life by investing in his/her personal development. We are a nation with more than 30 million functionally illiterate, and we continue to graduate students with inferior reading skills.

The immediate return on investment yields an upgrade to the quality of life for parents and their children, making the school-to-family connection possible and leading to increased parental involvement. The long-term outcomes benefit the nation鈥檚 economy through an educated workforce breaking the cycles of generational poverty and illiteracy.

Federal funds dedicated to families should yield meaningful short-term and long-term benefits to families and future generations.

The dollars attached to family and community engagement must do more than offer snacks and information packets, cosmetically meeting state and federal mandates.

Willful inclusion of parents and hard-won outreach are seemingly difficult to quantify. But through innovative grassroots outreach efforts, these things can and should be evaluated. What gets measured gets done. So we should require districts to be transparent with the community about attempts to engage families, assessment of each attempt, replication of what works, and eradication of what doesn鈥檛. that seeks to inform parents of a school鈥檚 performance is a great platform to display the evaluation of parent outreach efforts.

It鈥檚 tough, but doable.

No matter the federal and state supports offered to school districts, engaging families is a tough business. Schools are faced with hundreds of hurdles on any given day, and bringing families into the fold is considered another 鈥渢hing,鈥� which is the problem. When school districts set the expectation that parents are part of the machine that moves the needle, school leadership will own it and the school culture will reflect it. Once we remove the gap between what we say we want and what we actually believe about parents, we may find these efforts to be not so challenging after all.

Vesia Wilson-Hawkins is a former Metro Nashville Public Schools student, parent, and staffer. Through her blog 鈥淰olume and Light鈥� with Education Post, she advocates for parent choice in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.

Title I, ESSA, parent engagement. Or just 鈥渂lah blah blah.鈥� At least that鈥檚 what most parents hear when those words get thrown around with zero explanation of what they even mean.

These terms and many others blend into the noise that is parenthood in 2018. It鈥檚 our job as education advocates, educators, and policymakers to not just explain but humanize these concepts so that the average parent has the information they need to understand the basics of what is happening and, subsequently, the confidence to engage in a system that can feel overwhelming and even unwelcoming.

And the key to doing that lies in one simple word: relationships.

The 1 percent

Schools that serve a high percentage of low-income students are often referred to as Title I schools because they receive additional federal funds. One percent of these funds, according to past and , must be spent on parent engagement, but we are kidding ourselves if we think parent engagement is about money.

It isn鈥檛.

We are also kidding ourselves if we think that 1 percent of Title I dollars is a lot of money.

It isn鈥檛.

It鈥檚 approximately for the whole country 鈥� or a few dollars per low-income parent. So it鈥檚 good news that parent engagement is about the relationships that develop between schools, teachers, and parents and not about the mighty dollar. I鈥檝e lived it as a teacher. I鈥檝e experienced it as a parent. I鈥檝e seen it as an advocate.

(Click through the grid below to read other parent perspectives)

Luckily, it doesn鈥檛 take a lot of money to build better relationships. It does take a lot of hard work. And common sense. And empathy.

Parents, like all people, want to feel noticed and want to know that you care. And as trite as this may sound, it鈥檚 the key to increasing 鈥� and sustaining 鈥� parent energy and engagement in school. And while this desire to be noticed and cared for is universal, it is uniquely crucial with low-income parents because they are the ones who most often feel ignored and dismissed at the schoolhouse gate. They are often seen as the squeaky wheel, but they are rarely the one that gets the grease, largely because they aren鈥檛 a constituency that wields power and influence or breeds fear in decision makers.

Former NBA star and Alabamian Charles Barkley recently put out a call to action 鈥渢o do better for black people and poor white people.鈥�

Former NBA player and Alabama native Charles Barkley: 鈥淭his is a wake-up call for Democrats to do better for black people and poor white people鈥�

鈥� CNN (@CNN)

Barkley鈥檚 comments happened to be an admonition to the Democratic Party on the heels of a historic election. But the truth is, his words are a call to action for all of us who care about improving education for all kids. We must do better for our poor students. Period.

Find a common language

For starters, parents can鈥檛 take advantage of information that they don鈥檛 understand. We know that education-related terms that are second nature to edu-folk are by parents, and we must invest in changing that. Knowing that parents鈥� bandwidth for jargon is limited, this will require highly skilled communicators who can break down confusing and wonky language into bite-size chunks that make sense to parents. And it will require messengers who speak multiple languages and can really explain it to parents who can鈥檛 engage if everything is in English. In-person exchanges at drop-off and pick-up, back-to-school nights, social media pages, newsletters, emails, apps 鈥� there are countless ways to disseminate this information, and all are needed if we are to get closer to a place where schools and parents can speak a common language.

Visit their homes

There is a , who does something that engages families and tells them, unequivocally, that the school notices and cares. He can often be seen out and about with a staff member during one of their prep periods going to the homes of students who are absent and for whom absenteeism is a concern. If no one is home or no one answers the door, they leave a pre-printed door hanger that not only indicates the number of days missed but also reads in bold letters: 鈥�We stopped by to meet with you about your child鈥檚 attendance. We want you here at West Broadway Middle School every day. We love you and we鈥檝e got your back!鈥�

This is just one version of home visits, but what all home visits have in common is that they show families that you notice and that you care enough to make time to visit their home and talk about their child. It shows a level of care for the child that many families have never felt from a school before. It helps build a solid foundation on which a strong relationship 鈥� a partnership 鈥� can grow. Seems like a wise place to invest resources. And time.

And these could also be work visits. Sometimes a parent is so limited in their time off during the day that they can鈥檛 make it to the school for a meeting and get back to work in time. This is especially true of parents who are paid hourly and get a finite block of time for lunch and/or breaks. It is also true of parents who do not have a car. Rather than push the meeting off for weeks or months until the parent came come to the school building, take the meeting to them. Every school is filled with cars that just sit in the parking lot all day. Why not use them to help meet parents where they are, not only figuratively but literally too?

Embrace immigrant families

Families who have recently immigrated to the United States describe tremendous anxiety around their children鈥檚 homework. Marcela Molina, a Colombian mother of two, says that hearing the words 鈥渄on鈥檛 worry鈥� from her child鈥檚 teacher was a huge relief. She wanted the teacher to know that she couldn鈥檛 help with analysis of a poem or reading comprehension because her reading level in English is lower than that of her third-grade daughter. She also appreciates when the schools show how much they appreciate the different cultures of the families they serve. Not only do they feel valued as members of the school community, but perhaps more important, the parents see how much the school supports its students learning about and holding on to the identities of their cultural heritage. And Molina鈥檚 desire to get involved and actively engage is largely influenced, she says, by school leaders who are highly visible and who are always there with a wave and a friendly 鈥渉ello.鈥�

Take advantage of phone apps

There are apps that help build bridges and ease communication with families. They don鈥檛 take the place of the face-to-face relationship, but they do allow for daily communication between school and home. My youngest son鈥檚 school uses one called described as a 鈥渃lassroom communication app used to share reports between parents and teachers.鈥� The feedback can be in real time and gives parents a snapshot of the day or week that their child has had in school. While many families in Title I schools may not have computer access or even internet access at home, smartphones are ubiquitous in low-income communities. An app that a parent can check on his/her phone can be a game changer.

And speaking of cell phones, some schools provide them to teachers so that communication with parents (and students) can be easy and even immediate at times. I have found it incredibly helpful as a parent, and though I don鈥檛 take advantage of it often, it has been hugely valuable when I have. I鈥檝e only seen phones provided in charter schools, but it鈥檚 something that should be considered in traditional districts that have identified communication with parents as a major challenge.

Home visits, classroom apps, common language, cell phones 鈥� these are ideas that build and strengthen relationships with families. They aren鈥檛 a silver bullet, nor are they guaranteed to work. But they are focused on the one thing that makes or breaks school for so many kids: relationships. The sooner we embrace this reality, the sooner we will see real and meaningful parent engagement.

Erika Sanzi is a mother of three boys who writes for Education Post and and is a senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. She has taught in Massachusetts, California, and Rhode Island. Born and raised in Massachusetts, she now calls Rhode Island home.