Reconnecting and Elevating Parent Engagement with Staff Support

Kristin McHugh • Cahn Fellow 2023

How do we increase parent engagement by giving parents meaningful opportunities to gain knowledge and increase parent involvement? We asked ourselves this question when we held school events and had very low parent attendance at our school events despite what our data collection stated. We felt parents were very satisfied with the communication they were receiving based on our NYC School Survey results, but upon talking to and surveying parents personally we were given a very different narrative. That is when we knew we had to change our systems to better communicate with parents and get them more involved in our school community. Let us take you on our journey of increasing parental involvement in our school and providing them with more opportunities through communication, creating school teams, and building better relationships with parents.