Encouraging Parent Involvement

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I am not sure if this is the right place for this question, however here goes:

I need some advice/suggestions on ways to get parents more involved in their kid’s life academically. I am a member of the PTO at my kid’s school, and yesterday the principal and counselor reached out to us for some brainstorming. Alhumdulillah our kids are doing well and for the most part we stay on top of them, both academically and personally. Surprisingly (to me) there is about a 60/40 divide in which 40% are doing what we are doing. However the rest are not as involved or not involved at all. Some of it may have to do with demographics, single parent homes, even foster care kids. Some are working 2-3 jobs and say they can’t find the time or don’t have the knowledge to help. The curriculum in the school is fairly challenging, so some kids could use the help.

What we have collaborated so far is to create an afterschool homework lab for the aftercare kids. Someone who is in charge at that time will make sure the kids sit down and get their homework done as some have no one at home that can or will do so much as that. In addition we are trying to link with a local university to seek volunteer students who would be willing to tutor and provide homework help for their community service hours.

In the past the staff/school has tried to offer community outreach programs, classes on homework help (esp math & science, classes to understand the changes associated with Common Core and the new NJ PARCC testing structures.) They had gotten RSVP, however on the day of the event, only maybe 6 people actually showed up. We don’t have much trouble getting parents to come to fun events like shows or festivals, but it is like picking teeth to get them to come to any academically related classes. Statistics and data are showing that a certain sector needs this help, the school wants to give them help…but how do you get them to come in? In my daughter’s pre-k they offered all sorts of classes, and these classes were always full.

Any ideas from any parents, teachers, anyone?

All we can think of is offering a light lunch or dinner as an incentive, so they can come to these classes. We were thinking to create a webinar, but many of these people may not be so technically able to do so. Please any advice or insight will be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

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Re: Encouraging Parent Involvement

Why specifically does the administration feel they need more parent involvement? What do teachers think?

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Re: Encouraging Parent Involvement

^^ This!
We used to let parents know why we need their help...for example: reading with children at school because some children are struggling, some parents don't have enough resources to help children at home, some parents have schedules that make it difficult to work at home, etc. We told explicitly advertised that school will provide parents with resources and train them before they are assigned any children. school will work around the schedule they provide .eg. johny's dad is available from 10-11 on Tuesday but john'y class is in gym/music at that time, the school will match him with a different class.

we also had a volunteer celebration day, this was to thank all the volunteers for their service. school would get donuts/cookies for them.

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Re: Encouraging Parent Involvement

Thanks for the response.
S02- Parental involvement is needed overall in kids life, but specifically in homework. This information is based on teacher's finding with their students. Each kid gets a homework table for the week, that needs to be signed by parents each night. This is to make sure parent's have checked homework to make sure it is done, and also to see if it is right etc. Often times paper is not signed, nor is the homework done. Also in different classes, parent's have mentioned to the teacher's and homeroom leaders that sometimes they are unable to help their kids out mostly in math/science work. So most of it is based off of feedback, and also test scores etc. The teachers and staff identified troubled kids (grade wise) and want to help, esp to get them on track.

The issue is when small short classes/lectures are offered to address these needs, hardly anyone shows up. The next step is offering this sort of class with a meal and also childcare end of day so they can take kids home or right after school and not have to worry about dinner. They can perhaps send out another survery of sorts to figure out what days work best.