Attend this free event to learn about local progress in family-school engagement

We know that parents play a vital role in students’ academic success. But in many school districts, parents may be unsure how best to get involved and educators may be unsure how best to interact with parents. 

For the past nine months, school leaders from three elementary schools in the Pittsburgh area have been designing and testing simple, flexible and inexpensive ways to really listen to the parents in their districts. 

These educators — Scott Miller (principal at Avonworth primary school), Tabitha Marino (asst. superintendent at New Castle Area School District) and Erica Slobodnik (principal at Duquesne City Elementary School) — have served as LSX Fellows, partnering with Kidsburgh’s  Parents as Allies (PAA) initiative and the Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) to find new ways to incorporate parent feedback and create new channels of communication. 

The project, which is part of the Peer Learning Exchange Series by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, has given Miller, Marino and Slobodnik a chance to work closely with non-school experts with experience in research, journalism, children’s publishing and tech-based social entrepreneurship. 

Each school received a $1500 mini-grant to test new innovative ideas for family-school engagement. This builds upon the work that all three districts have done through Parents as Allies.

The result? A growing level of trust and social capital for the whole school community.

Their specific goals have included: 

• Doing research on family engagement and student success
• Laying the foundation for effective conversation, dialogue and empathy
• Designing  new strategies and easy-to-use tools
• Learning from the process of slowing down and seeking feedback 
• Replicating success in more schools (including suggestions for policymakers) 

If you’d like to learn about this work and see how it might benefit your family and your school district, you can learn about three prototypes for communication and relationship-building during the upcoming LSX Summit. 

Click here to register for free admission to “What Parents Want: Innovative Ways to Improve Communication and Build Trust in Schools,” which takes place on Zoom on Tuesday, June 24 from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. 

Along with Miller, Marino and Slobodnik, speakers will include: