Enhancing Parent Engagement through Effective Communication

Welcome to School Leader Soundbites, a podcast dedicated to empowering K-12 leaders with the latest insights and strategies in marketing and communications! Today we're diving into a crucial aspect of K-12 leadership: Enhancing Parent Engagement through Effective Communication. As leaders, our goal is not just to inform, but to engage and collaborate with our school communities, especially parents.

• The Importance of Parent Engagement
  • Parent engagement is a key driver of student success. Research consistently shows that when parents are involved, students have higher grades, better school attendance, and increased motivation.
  • In my years of experience, I've seen firsthand how effective communication can transform parent involvement from passive to active, significantly impacting student outcomes.
• Strategies for Effective Communication
  • Understand Your Audience
  • Two-Way Communication
  • Leverage Technology
  • Consistency and Clarity
  • Cultural Sensitivity
• Real-World Applications and Success Stories
  • Examples

Remember, effective communication is the cornerstone of parent engagement. It's about building a community where every voice is heard and valued. If you've found this episode helpful, please share it with your colleagues.

If you need any assistance with this, head to veronicavsopher.com. If you want more info, please contact me or drop questions in the comments and be sure to share this episode with your colleagues! If you have any questions or suggestions for future topics, I'm here to listen. Thanks for tuning in to School Leader Soundbites.

Find me at: https://www.veronicavsopher.com/
Social: @VeronicaVSopher

*About Our Sponsor:* K12 Insight partners with schools and districts to build stronger relationships with parents, students, and staff. They believe trust is the foundation of successful education and offer solutions designed to foster engagement, promote transparency, and turn feedback into actionable results. Want to explore how Let's Talk and K12 Insight's comprehensive suite of customer service solutions can amplify your school's efforts and strategic goals? Visit: go.k12insight.com/sopher

Transcript

Veronica Sopher:
Hello, hello, and welcome to School Leader Soundbites. I'm your host, Veronica Sopher. And today we're going to be diving into parent engagement. We're gonna talk about how to enhance it and how important it is to your communication strategy and all the things that are happening on your campus and in your district. So if you are joining us, make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, you don't want to miss any episode. If you are watching on Facebook or YouTube, drop some comments if you've got any questions or want to connect, I would love to hear from you. So, let's go ahead and get this episode started. We're going to talk about parent engagement, and what that looks like. And we know as leaders, it is imperative for collaboration to happen with parents in order to make our district successful, and have all those initiatives run smoothly. So we're going to talk about how important it is, all the different ways we can increase it some strategies, I'm also going to share some data and then some real-life examples in my experience that I have been able to implement in the districts I've been in to really make a difference. So tune in, we're super excited about this episode. Let's start a little bit about why it's important. So we obviously know that the data shows us that when parents are engaged, our students are going to perform better, but it also helps our staff, it makes our staff feel more supported, more confident in the decisions they're making. And but more importantly, they're able to tell their story to parents so that parents understand why decisions were made. And that's why it's really important to take a step back and make sure that we've got some strategy around our parent engagement and all the efforts that we're doing. So we know that when students perform better, parents are happier, our taxpayers are happier, they support what's happening in our districts, they come out, they vote, they engage, they attend all of our fine arts and athletic events and ultimately, it really drives the culture in our district. So we want to make sure that we're touching on all of those elements that are going to make a difference. There was a recent study by the Southwest Education Development Laboratory. And in this study, they were actually able to correlate how important parent engagement is on a campus, it was directly tied to student success with grades, with behavior, higher level programs, choice, the ability for parents to feel informed about the types of programs that their students were participating in. And then it really drives graduation rates in the success of our students and what happens to them at post-education. So knowing that parent engagement is really the cornerstone of success in your district is going to be one of the drivers and how we implement some of the strategies when it comes to parent engagement. So you know, feeling invited, feeling like you belong, feeling like there is a place for you at the table is the key to having parents participate in what's happening on our campuses. So we want to make sure that we're being really inviting, we have systems in place that don't put up barriers, that actually remove barriers, so that parents can come in and feel welcome that we are offering programming at a time that works for them at a venue where they feel welcome and in the languages that they're most comfortable in. So most of us already have some VIP program in place that we work with PTAs, PTOs, we want to extend outside of those traditional structures that we have, let's think about how we can communicate with people, especially if they're not physically able to participate in programming that we're hosting on the campuses. So we're going to talk about some virtual options too. Understanding your audience is the first strategy for effective communication. How we understand them has a lot to do with the types of questions that we ask them. Most of us are already running different types of surveys to find out how parents are feeling about our campuses, but understanding more importantly, where they get their news, how they process their news, how often are they visiting our website? Or how often are they engaging in our social media platforms? And we've got to be able to tailor the communication to them. So if we know that younger parents prefer short form for our content, making sure that those surveys aren't 30 or 40 questions, that they're more aligned to how quick our families want to engage with us. So they might be shorter, maybe four or five questions more often than maybe an annual survey. So that's something to take into consideration. We've got to really understand each audience. It's also important to know that there are some generational gaps between our secondary parents and our early childhood parents. So the way we survey them might look different too. So take that into account and really work with your campus leaders on how they their parents want to give feedback, because that's gonna play a huge part of it. That two-way communication really needs to look inviting. Because if we're telling people, it's a two-way communication, but we don't really make it easy for them to communicate back to us, then we're setting up a barrier. That's why language is important. That's why making sure that we are reaching out to parents through multiple channels is important because if we're just sending out an email, and then expecting them to respond, and then we're not happy with the type of response, right, that we're getting, that's really on us, as a school system, to be able to reach out in different ways, because email isn't always going to be your most effective way. Parents want to get to text messages, they do want to watch reels on Instagram, they do want to check out what we're doing on TikTok, because that's where they're at. And that's where they're consuming their information. So we want to encourage and foster that dialogue. We don't want it to just be a monologue from the district. Then leveraging technology, you know, let's go beyond those traditional social media platforms. Are we reaching out to them using our student notification system? Are we using robo-calls in any way? Or are we just setting those aside for emergency notifications, every district is going to have a different expectation for how we use the technology that we use. But it's going to be important to be consistent in whichever modality that we choose. So make sure that you find out how they want to be communicated to, how valid the data is for that type of communication, so that when you do utilize them, you're making sure that you're tracking it, and you've got some analytics that you can reference back. When I talk about consistency, I also want to talk about clarity. Clarity is important. We want to make sure that we're using the same language. Does everyone know what it is we're asking? In other words, are we using simple effective language? Are we being crystal clear? Are we providing references? Are we giving folks links that they can actually follow up with us on? Are we providing additional email addresses? Are we providing additional phone numbers so that they can call back we want to make sure that they can reach out to us in a lot of different ways. So that consistency and clarity are going to be really important. Because if we are really clouding the message and providing two or three messages at one time, then we're going to lose them. We want to make sure that our primary message goes out first, that it's clear and it's concise and there's a way for them to get back to us because otherwise we lost that opportunity. Then making sure that we're being culturally sensitive. So what secondary parents are going to value is going to look completely different than what elementary school parents are going to value. Now there are some households where we've got multiple levels of students in there. So we also want to make sure that when we are sending links out, if we can personalize them, that'd be great. If we've got parents with four or five students in our system, we generally want to just want to send out one communication with all of those links. So if the technology that you have allows you to differentiate, then we certainly want to do that. Otherwise, if there's four or five emails in their account, they're likely going to miss the opportunity, feel overwhelmed, and not click on any of them, and miss that opportunity to communicate with them. So when we're inviting them in to engage with us, we want to give them tools and resources that are easy to use. This is probably a really great time for me to chime in and talk about the School Leader Soundbites sponsor that we have. And that's K12 insight and K12 Insight does a phenomenal job with their Let's Talk platform. It's a platform that I've used in three of the districts that I've worked in and served in as an administrator. And the reason why I like Let's Talk is because not only is it a two-way communication tool, but it's also a great data source. And it helps you predict trends so that you can get ahead of topics. So if you're talking about a rezoning, if you are talking about a potential election, you can actually have resources and tabs on all of your social media channels on your website that allow parents to easily click on the tab, get some information ahead of time, and then also engage with you in a dialogue that you can track that you can monitor that doesn't require people to go and do some research. So if you are not a Let's Talk platform customer, I highly recommend you check them out and you can easily go learn more at K12insight.com/sopher just to get more information. So tying that back, I mentioned about bond elections, boundaries, rezoning- all of those topics that none of us are really like to get into but in the K-12 space. It's important. It's something that we have to revisit. And this is where a parent engagement is going to really support the work that you You know, school closures is another topic that's really do. If you know how parents feel about a topic, for example, school boundaries or rezoning, then you'll be able to give them scenarios and respond to their concerns or their issues that they're having. In my experience, parent engagement is what drives the decisions. It's what helps our boards of trustees make decisions and so we want to make sure that we've got a very good sampling. The way we do it is by making sure that as many parents as possible can connect. We want to make sure that parents also know what it's like, in our buildings in our district. So we invite them to open houses, we invite them to district wide events. And when possible, we also make these opportunities virtual and multilingual, because that's how we're going to make sure that we reach all of those families, and that we're being culturally sensitive to those, especially when families aren't available to come during the traditional work day, we have evening events. So we might rotate two or three events throughout the day so that we can have different groups of parents come in. touchy in some communities, because parents feel very strongly about campuses, about their neighborhood schools. But the reality is school districts are doing more with less. And that also includes the buildings and the facilities that we have. So it's important to know that parents understand the why behind some of the decisions that are made, especially when we're talking about school closures, surveying them, inviting them in to tour, inviting them into meet the campus staff so that they know what their students are experiencing in our buildings, that's going to be critically important, especially when we're having to make tough decisions, like combining two different school communities. Invite them in, give them swag, make them feel like they're part of the community, answer questions, and make sure they feel heard and seen. Because ultimately, that's going to be key to getting those parents to understand decisions that we make. I will tell you that in one of the districts I was in, a decision was made about early childhood. And we were going to decentralize how we did early childhood and actually add some different programs. And that was really frustrating for parents because they didn't understand the why behind it. And it created a lot of strife in the community, there was a lot of chatter on the social media channels that we were using. And it really derailed some of the work that we were doing. So when we debriefed how that process went, the number one factor was not having a clear and concise'why' to share with parents, and then bringing them into the process so that they were part of the solution. So the next time the district did something similar, the first thing we did was go to our parents, and we just didn't go to them when we needed something. We were going to them consistently about all different kinds of topics, whether it was literacy, whether it was social, emotional well-being, whether it was fundraising opportunities, playground issues, traffic flow, city ordinance changes, those kinds of things. Once we built that rapport with parents, then we were able to go to them with some of those tougher decisions that we had to make. So knowing when and how to connect with parents is going to be key when it's bad news or news that you know, won't be super comfortable for our community. We want to make sure that they understand that there's a why behind it. So keeping them well informed, not only giving them those little bits of information, but also all of the background and the data. Because some parents like to do a lot of research and compare making sure that that's also available to them. Don't make parents do open records requests for those types of data. We want to make it available, we want to be transparent, we want to make sure it's available on our website. So as I wrap up this episode, remember that effective communication is going to be key to the success of changes, it's those changes are often very difficult and very challenging. And sometimes we have a short runway. So if we are constantly building rapport with parents, then the runway that we need, when we're going to make different changes to programming, isn't quite as difficult because you'll know who those parents are. They have already been trained on how to communicate with you. You've been trained on how to communicate with them. And that flow of communication and trust is really significant. So if you found this episode helpful, please make sure you share it with others. I'd love to hear any comments. I would love to hear any other suggestions that you might have on ways that you have really engaged parents into your programming, and I look forward to our very next podcast, so make sure you hit subscribe because you don't want to miss any episode of School Leader Soundbites. You can always reach me at veronicavsoper.com and be sure to tune in to our next episode. We'll see you then.