FORM A PARENT ORGANIZATION TO ADVOCATE FOR FAMILY AND SCHOOL PRIORITIES.
What We Know
It is difficult for parents to navigate school systems in any given number of ways including but not limited to how to advocate for their students during behavior or academic meetings or even how to make a strong support plan during moments of low performance. A 3-year national study on the program Parent to Parent reported this can be mitigated when parents have access to networks of other parents who have similar experiences and who are equipped to troubleshoot solutions. As a result, cities such as Memphis and Nashville have invested in parent outreach, parent counselors, and parent advocates to show up for parents who need additional support.
What We Heard
Across house meetings, door knocking, and community conversations, numerous families shared stories of feeling a lack of support, awareness, and consistent disappointment while trying to navigate various challenges on behalf of their students in their respective districts. The challenges persist across socioeconomic statuses. One mother who was a former educator herself expressed frustration that even
after studying the district’s handbook, she was not able to figure out how to advocate for her child to keep him from being sent to an alternative school.
These stories set the stage for a broader conversation about what parents need to be better supported, valued, and informed as they navigate the educational and school discipline issues that they face–and they were backed up by survey data. Forty percent (40%) of surveyed parents indicated that they do not know to whom to reach out when they need support navigating a challenge within their school
system, while half of parents wanted greater access to critical information that would help enhance their understanding of how their child was doing in school and how they could support learning at home.
Collectively, the Community Power Design Team acknowledged that developing an organization to meet parents in their greatest time of need as they advocate and seek clarity for their students’ rights is an important pathway to equity and justice.
How Do We Make Change?
For City Leaders:
• Commit to working with parent organization to align shared visions for education with funding and budget priorities in the budget planning and approval process.
• Participate in regular meetings with parents and parent advocacy leaders to support quality education in partnership.
• Commit funding and research to developing alternatives to traditional suspension and expulsion protocols.
• Identify support systems for long-term academic growth for school-aged youth.
For District Leaders:
• Host quarterly community town halls to share disaggregated discipline data with communitybased organizations, parents, and education advocates beginning in Fall 2023.
• Establish a policy banning suspension for PK-3rd-grade students and suspension for truancy and tardiness violations by 2025.
• Measure and publish the outcomes of MTSS, RTI, and SEL interventions on student discipline by 2025.
• Address truancy and suspensions with root cause analysis and use community-based organizations to solve behavioral and attendance issues by 2025.
• Partner with parents and community-based organizations to ensure academic and discipline resources are accessible to families by 2024.
EmpowerED Commitments:
• Seek funding to start a parent organization that can support families in any or all of the following ways:
• Create training materials for parent advocates to support families with in-person support to navigate the school system, especially in high-stakes meetings with school or district staff.
• Create a workshop series for families to share resources tied to cradle to career benchmarks, including a career prep tracker developed by the city of Birmingham.
• Build advocacy power with families through a series of advocacy workshops that will prepare families to better support their peers, support the implementation of the Blueprint, and provide resources to better advocate for their children.
• Build a robust training series that transforms parents into school finance advocates in their community.
• Create a directory of organizations and programs that work toward the goal of supporting Birmingham’s families with access to resources and opportunities that aid in advocating for their children’s education, wellbeing, and economic mobility.