Parents’ voices are critical to student success, especially for students with special educational and health needs.
“For neurodiverse children, there’s a whole alphabet soup of letters out there, vocabulary-wise,” said Sherry Persaud, a parent at Bridges Public Charter School.
From assessments to Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings, every piece of special education can seem overwhelming for parents working to provide their students the academic and support services they need.
But they don’t have to go it alone. The Parents Building Bridges Program brings parents together to learn how to use their collective voices as advocates and work collaboratively with schools to produce better student outcomes.
“It has been helping me navigate learning what the letters mean when they’re written together so that I don’t go to the school and have to say, ‘Explain to me what this group of letters stand for,’” said Sherry. “I can speak more confidently.”
Led by Advocates for Justice and Education (AJE), an Education Forward DC grantee, the program helps parents navigate the special education process and build trust and communication with teachers, staff, and school leaders at DC public charter schools.
“It can become a tension-filled situation when you go to IEP meetings and, as a parent, we are worried about the long-term outcomes of our child; and we are trying to impart knowledge that is related to the whole makeup of our child to the school leaders; and sometimes we’re feeling as if they don’t always listen or they don’t always get it,” said Amelia French, AJE’s Director of Advocacy.
Parents Building Bridges helps parents and school leaders get on the same page and work together.
Their collaboration is producing a better school environment for both students and teachers. Since its founding in 2023, the program has worked with 21 families from 17 DC schools.
“Amelia approached me about joining the program to help with advocating for our children at the school who are neurodiverse,” said Sherry. “The school was doing a very good job. They had a teacher who was meeting with parents once a month, and we would pick a topic that we would like to address with the teacher. The teacher could then go back and address it with the principal.”
But when the teacher left the school, a void was created. This highlighted the need to focus on a larger issue: teacher retention.
“We did a lot of research around parent engagement and saw that teacher retention is a systemic concern,” said Amelia. “It’s happening across the United States and it’s also occurring at this individual school. A lot of the research that we found was that when you create a school where the parents are involved, it develops a school culture that teachers don’t want to leave.”
For Sherry, seeing what role parents can play in helping to retain teachers has been eye-opening. “If the teachers see that the school and the parents are working as a team to support them, maybe they’ll want to stay and not go somewhere else,” she said. Moving forward, she hopes parents can continue to deepen their relationships within the school.
Ed Forward DC’s investment has helped foster a new culture of advocacy within school communities. “What I’ve seen is really a closer connection with the people who are the most affected by the changes going on at individual schools,” said Amelia.
