The Family Engagement Roadmap
A Practical Guide for School System Leaders to Build Enduring Family Partnerships
Start your journey
Follow the steps to prioritizing and improving family engagement across every school and classroom.
Define and Model Core Beliefs
Start with a strong foundation: asset-based beliefs about families across your system.
Make the Case
Build buy-in by engaging allies and making the case to decision makers that family engagement drives student success.
Turn vision into action
Then, apply high-impact strategies and tools to put engagement into action.
Assess your current state
Begin by using this assessment to reflect on your current state. It’s not a scorecard, it’s a starting point.
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Your Foundation
If you said yes to the items below…
- Our system demonstrate that we believe that all families, regardless of background or circumstance, have the desire and ability to support their child’s success
- We take into account family and community voices when making decisions
- Families are seen as partners and decision-makers in our district
If you don’t meet all the statements, or want to go deeper, start with learning about Core Beliefs. This section explores foundational beliefs that support strong, system-wide family engagement.
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Making the Case
Select all that apply to your school system.
- Family engagement is recognized in our system as a driver of student achievement
- Our senior leaders and school board talk about family engagement’s impact on attendance, academic growth, and graduation
- We highlight the impact of family engagement through data, stories or personal experiences
If you don’t meet all the statements, or want to go deeper, start with Making the Case for Family Engagement. This section offers guidance on using data, stories, and strategies to build buy-in across your district.
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Taking Action
Select all that apply to your school system.
- We are leveraging evidence-based strategies to put our family engagement beliefs into practice
- We are leveraging resources, staffing, and policies across our system to support family partnerships
- Family engagement is embedded into core functions across the school system
If you don’t meet all the statements, or want to go deeper, start with Family Engagement in Action. This section highlights proven strategies, toolkits, and implementation guides.
What is Family Engagement?
Effective family engagement is the partnership between schools and families that promotes student success. We believe that family engagement starts with a trusting relationship and that the most successful academic partnerships are built on a strong foundation of trust and supported through ongoing communication. At Flamboyan Foundation we define that as REAL Family Engagement.
We use the word “Family” in this resource to mean any caring adult that supports a student’s academic and social emotional development. This can mean parents, guardians, grandparents, older siblings, foster parents and countless others. Students are also a member of the family and play a role in supporting their own education.
For the purpose of this resource, we define school system leader or system leader as someone who holds a leadership role within a school district, charter network, or broader educational system and is responsible for setting direction, shaping policies, and making decisions that impact multiple schools. This can include:
- Superintendents
- Assistant Superintendents
- Chiefs or Deputy Chiefs (e.g., of Academics, Family Engagement, Equity, or Operations)
- District Directors or Executive Directors
- Other central office leaders who influence system-wide strategy and implementation
When it comes to family engagement, school system leaders are uniquely positioned to embed it into strategy, resource allocation, and accountability structures.
The Five Roles that Families Play
Learn more about the 5 roles hereAt Flamboyan, we have seen, and research shows, that families play five essential roles in their children’s education. This happens when systems create the conditions for school leaders and educators to work in partnership with families to provide access, resources and information that helps them successfully work together.
An important way families can help their child succeed is to consistently communicate high expectations for student performance. Teachers can help families by sharing information about milestones students should meet to be on a successful academic path.
Families can support their child’s success by regularly checking in with them and teachers. Teachers can support families by consistently and proactively engaging with them about student progress and by being available to families in a timely way.
When families support and reinforce learning at home, their children do better in school. Teachers can help families support learning at home with their children through consistent academic partnership and ongoing communication like helping families create a series of though provoking, content specific questions families can ask children at home.
Families play a critical role in navigating their child’s educational experience from preschool all the way through college. The school community can support families by connecting them to resources and activities for their child that support their unique needs.
Families advocate for their children to ensure they get the personal attention, necessary supports they need to be successful in school. School leadership can support family advocacy by creating a feedback friendly environment. This could include a family feedback system where families understand how their feedback was used, expanded office hours for family conversations, or proactively seeking input from families about school policy decisions.
System Functions
Family Engagement is everyone’s job. When making the case for family engagement each office and department has a role to play. Here’s how Family Engagement shows up when incorporated throughout and across a school system.
The district communicates consistently and reliably with families. Communications use language and methods that are accessible to families. Communications are two-way, giving families the opportunity to share feedback or ideas with the district.
Family engagement is reflected in the strategic plan as a strategy for student improvement, not a “nice to have“. Success is measured by family outcomes and not outputs.
Family Engagement is given the resources; money, time, attention and staffing required to implement the strategy with high quality. Investment in family engagement is recognized as an investment in student academic and social emotional success.
Family engagement is a component of every district employee’s job. Family Engagement is a consideration in hiring decisions and performance evaluations and included in professional development offerings for all staff.
Families are partners in student learning and as such are given the information, they need to know what students are learning, how their child is performing and how they can partner.
Ready. Set. Engage.
Before you can build meaningful family partnerships, your district must first embrace and live out these core beliefs. These foundational principles should be shared by all system leaders and guide the behavior, decisions and actions of when it comes to families.
System Leaders believe that each and every family has the potential and desire to support their child’s success.
System Leaders believe that family and community voices are a critical part of informed decision making and that all voices have value.
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System Leaders believe that families are equal and valued partners in the education process, that they belong in leadership roles, and that their contributions are critical to the success of the school system.
System leaders believe that it is part of their role to establish a foundation of mutual respect and transparency between schools and families.
Family Engagement has a profound impact on student success, both academically and socially.Once you’re solid in your asset-based beliefs about families, the next step is the case for family engagement with colleagues and decision makers in your system. The goal of these conversations is to help identify and solidify resources to support family engagement, such as funding or staff capacity.
When leaders can point to clear research and evidence that demonstrates the direct correlation between family engagement and improved student outcomes, other decision-makers are more likely to allocate resources to support this work. Data helps make the case that family engagement is not just a “nice to have” but is a critical lever for school improvement. Identify what data points are most important to your school system and provide research highlights to support your case.
Among other things, family engagement is associated with:
- Reduced drop-out rates and higher graduation rates
- Increased student achievement
- Reduced chronic absenteeism.
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In addition to research data, another way to shift mindsets is through storytelling. Data helps tell your audience what is happening; stories help your audience understand why family engagement matters. By sharing real-life examples and success stories of the impact of family engagement on schools, students, and communities, decision-makers have an opportunity to reframe their own mindsets. When telling stories, think about the motivations of your colleagues or school board – what types of stories have helped shift mindsets in the past? Who are they most likely to want to hear from? Use this information to tailor your storytelling as an accompaniment to the data.
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While data and storytelling build pieces of the case for family engagement, one of the best ways to shift mindsets is to create a real-world experience for decision-makers to help them internalize the impact of family engagement. When people feel the impact of the work they are more likely to value it, allocate resources for it, and sustain it in a school district.
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You’ve established your values and built organizational buy-in. Now it’s time to bring family engagement to life. This is where mindsets transforms into meaningful action, creating the conditions for every family to be an equal partner in their child’s education.
Transform your approach through powerful strategies like home visits. Learn how to identify funding, train staff, and create meaningful connections.
Continue to foster family-educator partnerships by promoting two-way, positive, ongoing communication for every child in your district. Learn how to build systems-level support to help open up lines of communication between educators and families.
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Evolve your system’s approach to academic partnering through revamped engagements such as Academic Parent Teacher Teams, Student Led Conferences, and more. Learn how to build the conditions to help all families support their child’s learning and monitor their child’s progress.
Take the Next Step
The journey doesn’t end here. It’s just beginning.
Share Your Progress
Inspire other systems by sharing your family engagement journey on social media. Use hashtag #FamilyEngagementRoadmap
Share Progress
Support the Movement
Join our network to help share how family engagement is changing your system and engage with other like-minded leaders on best practices.
Support the Movement
About Flamboyan Foundation
Guided by the belief that all children deserve the opportunity to live a fulfilling life, the Flamboyan Foundation works to ensure students most impacted by inequity are prepared to succeed in school and beyond.
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