At the La Comadre Network, we are always looking to uplift parent voice and representation in our children’s education. Through our podcast and live streams, we’ve been able to sit down with amazing like-minded champions in education, including Marilyn Koziatek, who spoke about how she and her school empowers parents: “I love empowering our parent leaders. We also have to be able to empower all of our parents. One of the tools I’ve done with parent engagement at Granada, is I’ve implemented digital technology tools that translate surveys into whatever language is on your mobile phone. So it could be Spanish, or it could be Arabic, or whatever your first language is. Then I’m able to communicate in two ways and parents can respond to me in the language that they choose. Then I can take that information, and use it to make our schools better. Also, we check in…we call them pulse checks. We check in with our parents that way every two weeks, or sometimes once a month. And we just ask them, hey, are you happy with our school this week? And I tell you, we get a ton of wonderful praise for our teachers. And then we find out our areas of growth that we can use to make our schools better.”
We are loving the idea of pulse checks — does your school or district do these? How do you think schools can empower parents to be more involved and drive the decisions to further our children’s education?