Rules of Engagement
by Andrew Cummins
Since the first rendition of Local Control and Accountability Plans in the 2013–14 school year, the phrase “authentic stakeholder engagement” has taken on a litany of meanings at school districts across California.

For some, the process offers a new tool to bolster already-strong parent and community relationships. For others, the phrase has proven more challenging, representing a goal that can seem somewhat intangible, serving as more of a compliance checkpoint in the annual cycle of prioritizing academic services and identifying funding.

Concerns and questions about what constitutes stakeholder engagement have addressed issues such as reaching parents and community members beyond the “usual suspects” involved in school activities and groups, balancing input and suggestions with program and budgetary limitations, and, particularly in smaller districts, finding staff with the time and expertise to lead engagement efforts.

Mother and daughter walking to school together
by Andrew Cummins
Since the first rendition of Local Control and Accountability Plans in the 2013–14 school year, the phrase “authentic stakeholder engagement” has taken on a litany of meanings at school districts across California.

For some, the process offers a new tool to bolster already-strong parent and community relationships. For others, the phrase has proven more challenging, representing a goal that can seem somewhat intangible, serving as more of a compliance checkpoint in the annual cycle of prioritizing academic services and identifying funding.

Concerns and questions about what constitutes stakeholder engagement have addressed issues such as reaching parents and community members beyond the “usual suspects” involved in school activities and groups, balancing input and suggestions with program and budgetary limitations, and, particularly in smaller districts, finding staff with the time and expertise to lead engagement efforts.

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renewed research and policy focus on the importance of effective engagement in the LCAP process has shown that a sound approach, effort and execution can positively impact schools and districts in ways that go well beyond their representation in a write-up in a lengthy document. State Board of Education discussions, California Collaborative for Educational Excellence resource toolkits, experts at statewide education conferences and CSBA’s own professional learning network have all recently shined a spotlight on understanding and encouraging authentic parent and community engagement.

Common threads through strategies and best practices for LCAP stakeholder engagement for school board members to consider have risen to the surface.

Laying the groundwork and building respect

If one was to sit in on one of the five full-day sessions of Azusa Unified School District’s Parent Advisory Committee for LCAP development, they would experience an atmosphere of diverse participants, deep dialogue, honest conversations and strong relationships. Jennifer Edic Bryant, director of metrics and LCAP for the district, wouldn’t have it any other way in the roughly 8,300-student district in eastern Los Angeles County.

Called the PAC Plus because of its expansion from traditional membership, the committee consists of one parent from every school and two parents each representing English learners, students with disabilities and students in the migrant education program. Also included in the same forum are representatives from teacher, classified and administrative staff groups. Though the district also uses surveys with high response rates and other methods to gather LCAP input, Bryant said the committee has helped inform district priorities on a whole new level.

“Every single parent brings so many positive ideas and a heart for their children, and so they can bring great things to this process and to what you’re going to be doing to improve and grow things for your students,” Bryant said. “That’s important. To see your parents as having the assets and the ability to really contribute in a meaningful way.”

“Another way that parents feel really heard and understood is that you’ve invested time to help them understand — and they can. This whole adage of, ‘Oh, they’ll just never get it.’ That’s not true at all.”
—Jennifer Edic Bryant, director of metrics and LCAP, Azusa Unified School District

One of the pitfalls when reaching out to parents and community members about LCAP input, Bryant said, is presenting surveys or questions without providing the proper context or the necessary background information. “Asking parents, ‘How do you want to improve the school? How do you want to improve the classroom? How do you want to improve student learning?’ It’s an unfair question because they’re answering it without that understanding,” she said. To address the issue in the PAC Plus, a significant amount of time is spent exploring California’s Local Control Funding Formula and Azusa’s current LCAP.

“They want to do right by their students, and probably all students, not just their own. But if you haven’t given them good knowledge to decide and make those decisions, it’s hard,” Bryant said of parent input. “So, another way that parents feel really heard and understood is that you’ve invested time to help them understand — and they can. This whole adage of, ‘Oh, they’ll just never get it.’ That’s not true at all.”

Nearly 10 hours away, nestled in the mountains of Northern California’s timber country, longtime Fall River Joint Unified School District board member and current board President Teri Vigil shares a similar attitude about the hearts of parents and the value of their input. “A lot of times I think school board members or staff, when they judge these parents, you know, say, ‘Oh, they don’t care,’” Vigil said. “But every parent cares in their own way. You just have to keep reaching out, keep reaching out, keep reaching out.”

Reaching out in expansive, rural Shasta County takes on challenges of its own. It has transformed into a situation where instead of expecting stakeholders to come to the district every time, district leaders and staff sometimes go to them.

“When you look at the demographics of my district, a lot of these parents didn’t have the best experience in school. So they’re a little reluctant. Like, ‘Oh, why do I have to go there?’ But if we go to the Catholic church or we go — we have a high population of Native Americans — and so if we go to the tribal office and show them respect that we’re doing the traveling and we’re coming to them on their terms, I think that does a lot,” Vigil said.

Making connections and sharing best practices

Now a CSBA Governance Educator/Consultant in addition to her Fall River board role, Vigil was co-facilitator of CSBA’s California Collaborative for Educational Excellence Professional Learning Network, a two-year project that included more than 30 school board members and superintendents from across the state. One goal that the group identified was to develop information that would assist board members in their work, and in their collaborative work with the superintendent and cabinet, to develop and approve an LCAP that best serves the needs of students and families in their local communities, including through stakeholder engagement.

One tangible outcome of the network was a CSBA governance brief, “Six Essential School Board Roles in LCAP Implementation and Development.” But perhaps even more important were the connections made, discussions had and ideas shared by board members during the two years. “That’s why I’m so proud of the districts that were in my professional learning network, because during that two-year period, they started sharing best practices,” Vigil said.

Likewise, Bryant presented several of Azusa’s LCAP engagement strategies at a well-attended session at the third annual California Multi-Tiered System of Support Professional Learning Institute in Long Beach in July. The session focused on the revised LCAP self-reflection tool for parent engagement, which aims to gauge how well district leaders think they fared in connecting with parents and the greater community. “More and more, the research is indicating that family engagement is not just this thing that’s on the side,” Lidia Renteria, California Department of Education programs consultant, said at the presentation’s outset.

There are, in fact, clear examples of districts across the state using the power of LCAP engagement and input to inform everything from advanced coursework offerings to facilities projects, all while using the avenue to increase overall parent and community involvement.

Two Southern California districts with representatives in CSBA’s professional learning network, Moreno Valley Unified School District and Bakersfield City School District, have served as lighthouses for the somewhat choppy seas of LCAP engagement over the last several years. They have garnered attention from advocacy groups, media outlets and researchers alike. Beyond traditional surveys and committees, the districts are bringing on parents internally to expand their reach, as well as using a few unique outreach tactics.

Moreno Valley Unified’s board of trustees and Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora make it a point to listen to and engage the community at all possible junctures, so it only became natural to start a parent ambassador program, said board President and CSBA Past President Jesus M. Holguin. Hired on a temporary basis and only working a few hours a week, their task is to reach out to parents and families that normally aren’t engaged with the school district.

“They don’t go to the clubs, they don’t get on the phone, they don’t read anything, but yet they have those conversations through the parent ambassadors,” Holguin said. “So, more people are getting engaged through the system that way.”

Other districts are engaging that way as well, with the parent ambassador program coming on board in Shasta County. “You wouldn’t think what works in Moreno Valley could work in Fall River. But guess what, we brought the ambassador program,” Vigil said. “It’s not as big as their program, but it’s modeled after it.” (Moreno Valley Unified’s enrollment is about 33,100, while Fall River’s is roughly 1,200).

In addition to a Parents as Liaison, or PALs, program in which the district uses parent volunteers to engage more parents in the LCAP process, Bakersfield City School District’s Family and Community Engagement initiative helps grow connections and build new ones. Every school site in the roughly 30,700-student elementary district has a full-time FACE staff member, and most campuses also house parent centers, said school board member Pam Baugher.

“So, there’s a lot of ways to bring [parents] in,” said Baugher, who also serves as a CSBA Region 12 Delegate. “And, of course, that has a cost of having a staff person, as well as the sites where we have the parent centers, providing that room is another cost. But it is possible to do it.”

Representing stakeholder input

Moreno Valley Unified also reaches out to the community — from businesses to service clubs to faith-based groups — by way of presentations in hopes of looping more stakeholders into the LCAP process and to spread general awareness about district progress and happenings. Realizing the approach can only reach so many people at one time, Superintendent Kedziora hosts periodic telephone town halls in which he connects with several hundred parents and community members at one time.

Holguin said that using multiple ways to engage with stakeholders pays off in the long run. “The LCAP is a process that everybody should be actively engaged in so that we all take full ownership of the process,” he said. “And when we all have full ownership of the process, then it’s going to be more effective for the entire student body. And not only the student body but the district, the whole community, the whole city.”

Thus far, Holguin said, formal stakeholder input has led to several programs that are in place today, including the addition of sought-after International Baccalaureate programs at both a high school and a middle school in the district. Groups also rallied behind the cause of installing a new athletic field surface, which also came to fruition, and advocating for more science, technology and math programs.

But an added difficulty in the engagement process can be toeing the line of asking for input without disappointing parents and community members when their suggestions don’t lead to action or don’t appear in the final LCAP. For Azusa’s Bryant, that’s where relationships and contextual information come back into play. “The positive relationship is critical because then we have that trusting relationship. And so when we do explain something to them, they believe us and they know we have their students’ best interest at heart,” she said.

Valuable resources
on LCAP engagement

CSBA governance brief: Six Essential School Board Roles in LCAP Implementation and Development is the result of CSBA’s two-year professional learning network with more than 30 school board member and superintendent participants from small, medium and large districts spanning California. Included is a section on encouraging and participating in the ongoing engagement of a diverse range of stakeholders. Read the brief online at bit.ly/2Wdkiw5.

Authentic engagement resource toolkit: A December 2018 California Collaborative for Educational Excellence-hosted webinar posed key questions and offered tips on communicating to engage rather than to simply inform during the Local Control and Accountability Plan process. The recorded webinar and PDF presentation (including a customizable version for district use) are available on the CCEE’s resource collection page at bit.ly/2lJEMei.

Sometimes, a dose of reality is required, especially in terms of funding limitations. “Even though we know that parent committees aren’t actually approving the LCAP, they’re consulting and our stakeholders are consulting,” Bryant said. “We go through and sometimes there are changes that say, ‘Well, hey. We would like to see equal amounts of money for the arts for elementary and secondary. Is there any way to do this?’ And we say, ‘Well, if we did this, where would we take from? Because it’s not unlimited.’”

“Everybody isn’t always happy with everything we do, of course, but the vast majority, when they think we should be doing something else, is almost always either out of the scope of what’s possible for us or we really don’t have the extra money to do something like that,” Bakersfield’s Baugher added. “And I would say 99 out of 100, if not higher, understand and accept the rationale why we can’t do that.”

Making an impact beyond the LCAP

For Fall River Unified’s Vigil, the importance of parent and community engagement is best described through a moment she experienced at the district office in Burney. At an LCAP stakeholder meeting in the reform’s early years, a group of mothers of Hispanic students sat in the back of the room. Vigil approached the group and sat near them, wondering if they were able to follow a presentation not only in their second language but full to the brim with educational jargon.

“So, one of the ladies, she turned over to me and she was like, ‘You mean we get a choice in what programs are made for our kids?’ And I go, ‘Yeah.’ And that was the whole epiphany for me. This is what it’s about. It’s including these parents that think that they don’t matter, and that they don’t have a say in what programs are provided to their kids. We’re really building that capacity for them.”

As a former teacher, Bakersfield’s Baugher said in addition to receiving invaluable input on the district’s programs and its spending priorities, a positive offshoot of the LCAP engagement process is a greater parent connection to their child’s overall school experience.

“The parents I had who were engaged with their kids, their kids did better in school, over the parents that were disengaged. So, I think the benefit of getting people involved in the LCAP is that they do become more involved with their children,” Baugher said. “They realize that they do have a voice in what’s going on with their child, and if it’s done in the right way, they should feel welcome at the board, at the LCAP meeting, at school board meetings and at their school site. So, I think that’s a huge positive about increasing real parent and community engagement.”

And in the end, Moreno Valley’s Holguin said he finds that receiving authentic feedback from parents and community members about what they see and value in their children’s schools is central to ensuring a district is fulfilling its core educational mission.

“We know we have to make sure that our programs are effective so that people believe in the district, that people trust the district. And that’s why when people see success, they want to be part of it. If people don’t see success, they want to walk away,” he said.


Andrew Cummins is a staff writer for California Schools.