A Family Communication Strategy That Works

I lead the Family Partnerships Department for a district with 56 schools. One of the most common complaints I hear from teachers and school leaders is, “We invited all of the families to school events, but most of them didn’t attend,” with turnout particularly low from the school’s underrepresented communities. We created Families and Educators Together (FET) teams to bring together educators and primarily immigrant families to discuss how to strengthen school-family partnerships. We quickly learned that our communication approaches were efficient but not effective. Before we can engage parents as productive partners, we have to develop better communication systems.

Why is turnout low?

In many cases, I’ve found that low turnout for events occurs because the staff has not built up enough trust with families from certain demographic groups within their school. Another factor that can be even more significant in impacting family attendance at school events is how schools are communicating.

Before our FET teams existed, nearly every school would invite families through three mediums: an email, their parent newsletter, and flyers. A teacher who co-leads her school’s FET team told me recently that when she surveyed her 20 students’ families to gauge how many of them were actually reading the messages, only half answered in the affirmative. As we invited families to FET gatherings and only a couple of parents showed up, we were forced to reckon with the inadequacy of falling back on this old paradigm of outreach.

Creating new communication pathways

Perhaps the best question to ask families at the start of each school year is, “How can we best communicate with you?” If we truly want to engage parents and caregivers as the partners they are, it’s incumbent upon us to shift our approach. By doing so, we don’t simply bolster attendance at family engagement events; we cultivate ongoing communication that leads to mutually fruitful relationships and academic outcomes that benefit everyone. This shift also leads to a more culturally responsive family engagement approach by honoring families’ preferences rather than expecting them to conform to a one-size-fits all approach.

I work closely with 30 schools monthly as a family engagement coach, and when I attend their FET team gatherings, I consistently hear from families that they would like more ongoing and succinct communication from school staff, and in their preferred language. What we have learned is that when schools front-load their communication efforts through a multifaceted approach, it pays big dividends throughout the school year. Specifically, we have invested in these recruitment pathways:

• Texting families via apps with built-in translation, such as TalkingPoints.
• Engaging in more informal, face-to-face recruitment efforts.
• Asking staff or parent leaders to make personalized phone calls.
• Recording an automated voice message that goes out to all families.
• Using video recordings to create a more personal touch in place of an email.
• Harnessing students to invite their families and incentivizing the return of a signed flyer.
• Drawing on parent leaders to invite other families via WhatsApp as well as during in-person encounters.

When educators shift from an approach that relies primarily on email toward using texting apps, it sparks more frequent two-way communication and also conveys to families that they are equal partners.

The power and efficacy of this multidimensional approach became clear at one of our high schools this past school year. In prior years, the FET team leaders had relied solely on those traditional outreach strategies. As a result, the number of families that turned out for monthly team gatherings hovered between three and five. When new team leaders implemented this more proactive approach, there were 23 parents at the first meeting of the year, and attendance remained in the 20s for every gathering the rest of the school year.

Communicating the importance of events

Even as teachers and school leaders worry about parents not showing up, parents regularly lament to me that they feel overwhelmed and burned out by the deluge of communication they receive. As one parent told me, “I have three kids, and I get a flyer (or three), multiple emails, ClassDojo messages, and robocalls home about every single event their schools host. I probably get 50 to 100 messages in a given week just about school events.”

As a result, two final critical questions for us as educators to reflect upon, solicit input from parents about, and think strategically about are: How often are we communicating with families? And should we consistently reduce the length and complexity of our written communications so they better suit the needs of our targeted audiences?

What are a few positive steps forward? School leaders can draw upon staff and parent input to determine the optimal frequency of communication and develop a schoolwide communication policy to reduce overlap and overwhelm. Additionally, through parent feedback and a staff training around best communication practices, schools can begin to develop an ethos of reducing the length and complexity of their messages home. For instance, several of our FET teams have examined the weekly school newsletter and helped the school leaders develop a template that:

• Is more concise,
• Avoids jargon,
• Is visually appealing,
• Is written at the fourth-to-sixth-grade reading level that experts recommend for school communication to families, and
• Prioritizes what information is truly most important for families to know. 

By taking these practical steps, schools can more effectively, efficiently, and productively engage families as partners, and save precious time for staff and families alike.