[Transcript] Better Together: Elevating Family-School Partnerships

SPEAKERS

• Karen L. Mapp, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Cindy Marten, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
• Pedro Martinez, Superintendent, San Antonio Independent School District
• Keri Rodrigues, Founding President, National Parents Union

MODERATOR

• Kavitha Cardoza, Education Reporter

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KAVITHA CARDOZA: Welcome, everyone. I’m Kavitha Cardoza, a reporter and member of the Education Writers Association. I’ll be facilitating the conversation on family engagement today on behalf of our host, Carnegie Corporation of New York. We’re livestreaming on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. And I invite you to share your thoughts online using the hashtag #CarnegieForum. We’re going to kick off today’s forum with a short video.* It features the Family Engagement Lab, an education nonprofit that’s had a great response connecting schools and families during the pandemic. Their secret? Text messaging.

During today’s webinar, we’re excited to share a new report on family engagement, followed by a conversation with Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Martin, and a panel discussion with a parent and a school district leader. But first, let’s go to Ambika Kapur, who heads up the family engagement program at Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Hi, Ambika.

AMBIKA KAPUR: Hello. Thank you, Kavitha — and welcome, everyone. I’m so grateful that all of you can join us today. And I especially want to thank our moderator, our speakers, and our partners: Chiefs for Change, the Education Writers Association, the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement, and the National Center for Families Learning. Your help made this event possible.

As Kavitha mentioned, I oversee our foundation’s grantmaking in family engagement and what we call public understanding, which involves fostering collaboration among everyone who has a stake in student success: parents, educators, students, and community leaders. We believe that when parents are empowered as true partners in their children’s education, students thrive, schools are stronger, and the whole community benefits.

This issue took on renewed urgency when schools shut down due to the pandemic, breaking the imagined boundary between home and school. As challenging as the past year has been, innovations introduced to strengthen the home-school connection have the potential to bring lasting benefits to students. We must sustain and build on that foundation. That’s why we thought it was critical to host this event now, as district and school leaders determine how to use federal recovery funds and are deeply actually engaged in planning for the coming school year.

It is essential that education leaders invest in family engagement to ensure that families have a voice in critical planning decisions for the fall and for the future. We really hope this forum will help demonstrate what meaningful family engagement could look like and the steps we need to take to create partnerships that are built on a framework of equity, trust, and respect.

Thank you and I’m going to turn it back to you, Kavitha.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: I love that phrase “imaginary boundaries.” Today’s forum was inspired by a new report on family engagement commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York. It’s about moving from seeing the family-school relationship as something that’s nice to do — to a core element of our educational system.

The report outlines some practical ways to help get to a more collaborative, equity-focused environment that Ambika was just describing. And here today to talk about some of the findings is the expert who led the project, Dr. Karen Mapp. Karen is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and coauthor of the report. The title is Embracing a New Normal: Toward a More Liberatory Approach to Family Engagement. She has more than 20 years of experience in this area and has held more high-level positions than we can attempt to list. Welcome, Karen.

KAREN L. MAPP: Thank you so much, Kavitha. Good day, everyone. I want to extend greetings, and thanks to all of you who have taken the time out of your busy schedules to be with us today. Last March when pretty much all of the world’s schools closed their doors, I immediately began to receive emails and phone calls and texts from educators who suddenly wanted to talk about partnerships with families.

Many of them admitted to me that they had been resistant to what many of us in the field had been saying for decades: that partnerships between home and school were an essential ingredient to student and school improvement.

In our report Embracing a New Normal, we state that the two pandemics —the global COVID-19 crisis and the crisis of systemic racism — are forcing a recalibration of the family-school partnership. It is my hope that the education sector, in particular, school leaders and district leaders, policymakers, researchers and funders … my hope is that we are all finally ready to embrace a new normal of family engagement practice. The report serves as a call to action and identifies ways that this long overdue recalibration can take place.

First, we are calling for a new normal of family engagement practice that is liberatory, free of dominance and the hierarchies and invisible boundaries that Ambika mentioned. Solidarity-driven — in union and in partnership between home and school. And equity-focused, where our family engagement practice is fair and just. And we aren’t afraid to meet families where they are, and create opportunities to cultivate these full, equal, and equitable partnerships with all families, and not just the privileged few.

Second, we are calling out the unspoken and often ignored dynamics that influence how families are seen and treated by educators. For example, where our nondominant families are treated, at best, as spectators to the work of schools. Where families’ expertise and cultural capital are overlooked or devalued. We must interrogate and jettison the deficit-based mindsets about families, and see all of our families, in the words of our colleague Shantae Toole, “as the geniuses that they are.”

And family engagement efforts sometimes take on what we’re calling an assimilation function. And this is where schools and educators are seen as the experts and providers of information, and families are the needy receivers. You know, I’ve noticed quite often that the work that’s often started in our districts is family-facing — so, parent universities, parent leadership trainings. Now these are necessary, but they’re not sufficient to move family engagement practice to one that is liberatory, solidarity-driven, and equity-focused. We also have to focus on the building of the capacity of the practitioners to lead into this new normal.

And finally, we are calling on all of you in your various roles to build the infrastructure needed to sustain this new normal of family engagement. Here are a few of our recommendations.

Make time and space for the practice of family engagement. We cannot ask our teachers and others to go off and do family engagement if we don’t provide the time and space for them to do so. Invest in professional learning — and unlearning — to shift these mindsets. Focus family engagement efforts on staff development. Unfortunately, many of our teachers and other educators have not received any training on family engagement — so we must provide that to them. And we have to create senior-level positions so that they can be at those cabinet tables. And these positions are dedicated to family and community engagement. So these are four of the nine recommendations that we make in the report. And I encourage you to read the report in its entirety and make a plan to embed at least one or two of these recommendations into your reopening plans and your practice.

I want to take this moment to thank Ambika and the staff at Carnegie for making all of this possible. Thank you for this time, and I look forward to the rest of our conversation today. Kavitha, back to you.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: In your report, Karen, you mention change efforts in the past resulted in denial, resistance, or outright rejection. And I love that we’re moving towards a new normal and that you and your report have very practical steps to get there. So, thank you so much, Karen.

KAREN L MAPP: Thank you.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: For our audience, if you would like a free download of the family engagement report, please use the camera on your phone to scan the QR code on the screen. Or if you prefer, you can visit the corporation’s website via the link you should see on the slide, carnegie.org/newnormal2021. You can find the report, essays, videos, and related materials about family engagement. We will provide this information throughout the webinar.

The report’s recommendations provide a good jumping off point for the next conversation. And that’s between Karen and Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten. Cindy Marten was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy secretary last month. Before joining the Biden administration, she served as the superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District in Southern California. 

Deputy Secretary Martin has more than 30 years of experience as an educator and as an expert on literacy. Welcome, Madam Deputy Secretary Marten. We’re looking forward to this conversation. I’ll turn it over to you, Karen, and return in a few minutes to present some audience questions.

KAREN L. MAPP: Thank you, Kavitha. Welcome, Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten.

CINDY MARTEN: Thank you so much. It’s so great to be with you. Please call me Cindy.

KAREN L. MAPP: Okay, great, because that’s a mouthful. It’s a mouthful. Well, thank you, Cindy. It’s so great to be able to have this conversation with you today. I shared with you that I have a warm place in my heart for San Diego because Bea Fernandez and Melissa Whipple were the women who really helped me cut my teeth on family engagement. So I feel that bond between the two of us. We’ll have to talk about that more some other time.

CINDY MARTEN: Yes, thank you. Thanks for bringing up their names. I always say if you want to know what works, especially in family engagement, ask the people doing the work — and great work by Melissa and Bea, so thanks for bringing them up as we begin our work today.

KAREN L. MAPP: Well, thank you so much for being here. So my first question to you is that Secretary Cardona has identified family engagement as one of his top priorities. And so what does that look like from your perspective? And what is the USDOE’s vision for family engagement?

CINDY MARTEN: Well, you’re exactly right, that Secretary Cardona has identified this as a key priority, one of our top priorities at the Department of Education. And I have to say what we’ve learned over the past year, most importantly, is how important it is that we all work together.

We have to work together to ensure that everyone who needs to be at the table to support our students in being successful is actually at the table. And that has to include our parents and our caregivers. And so in doing that we have to provide resources and guidance and support so that we can show that our school districts are building trust.

We move at the speed of trust and trust with communities and families, especially our families of color, who for a variety of reasons — they have less trust in our education system than some other families. And so it’s really important that even as we’re heartened by the trend, our schools are reopening, we’re heading in the right direction, parents are re-enrolling our students for in-person learning, and our most recent school survey on reopening shows, unfortunately, that Asian, Black, Latin X students are less likely than their peers to be returning to the in-person instruction. And that’s where the trust comes in.

Your report has nine great recommendations. I think it’s really important that we work to understand why the trust is broken, and begin with extensive and think about sustained outreach. What are the ways that we can create opportunities to not just hear families — but truly, authentically, meaningfully listen to families, and try to understand what their hesitation is.

For the secretary’s top priority to be met around family engagement, it means being in meaningful, authentic relationship and understanding how we’re building trust. And so when we talk about community and family engagement, there’s a little nuance to that conversation. We have to ensure when we talk about that, that every student gets what they need, when they need it, in the way that they need it. And those are the things that in order for us to figure that out, we often define equity that way — you may hear it defined like that in other places — but in order to figure out what students need, when they need it, and the way that they need it, we have to figure that out and learn about that with our families. Because the only way to get 100% in-person — and sustain it post-reopening — is to build trust. And trust happens by listening and being responsive.

KAREN L. MAPP: You know, and I so appreciate your leaning into this concept of trust, because when, you know, we talked over the last 14 months, Eyal and I, about the language we wanted to use to really push this idea of this partnership, and we thought about this concept of liberatory, solidarity-driven, and equity-focused. So much of that all is built on the foundation of trust. And I have to admit in my time of doing this work, it’s that trust piece that seems the hardest one to sort of get people to understand they have to spend time on that. So when you think about what the federal government and what the department could do to sort of help practitioners and educators understand what … how to get to this new normal of family engagement, what are some of the tools or things that you think might be available or supports that the department can provide?

CINDY MARTEN: Yeah, your words in your report were very intentional and meaningful to me, as a lifelong educator. But to the field: the liberatory, solidarity-driven, equity-focused — one of your nine recommendations is family engagement is equity work at its core. That is exactly the kind of engagement that we should be supporting.

When you talk about liberatory, solidarity-driven, equity-focused … you may be familiar with … yeah, I’m familiar with your report. I’m sure you’re familiar when the department released volumes one and two of the COVID handbook. What we did is we made sure to include examples of family engagement that were aligned with exactly this kind of approach.

So for example, in volume two of the COVID reopening handbook that was released in the spring by the Department of Ed, what you’ll find in there is we set really clear guidelines, and we put out replicable strategies that all schools could be doing. Things like, you know, meaningfully engage parents in your reopening plans for reopen … for reopening in-person learning, whether it’s one-on-one, town hall settings, accessible surveys, we put best practices in there.

We also included making sure — should be simple and everyone should know this — but we have to ensure that the materials, resources, and the communications that we’re providing to our parents are in languages that they can understand and that they can access. So, translated materials, social media pages that work to really engage families, feedback in languages parents and caregivers speak, and accessible for parents and caregivers with disabilities.

We also looked at wanting to recommend flexible scheduling for parents, because many of our parents have work schedules, work evenings, or they’re essential workers. So some of those recommendations also we said that in that same handbook, parents … the schools should partner with the community-based organizations, and the ones that are the trusted partners that families already know and trust, the ones that already provide wraparound services to families that can benefit from them and support family engagement because trust lives sometimes in those community-based organizations. So we made that front and center and squarely focused in what we were releasing. And that’s how you move into these transformational ways of engaging families.

We see things like door-to-door canvassing, using the school meal pickup locations, where you’re dropping off and picking up meals during the pandemic. That was an opportunity to meet families face-to-face and discover their needs in real time, as we engaged and worked, you know, head on with our families — face-to-face communications when possible.

So with all that, all of these are transformational practices. There is more guidance coming soon, including guidance on the community schools that will be addressing the impact of lost instructional time that we hear so much about. We’re also going to emphasize in that the importance of the family engagement strategies. So you’ll see we’ve launched the Safer Schools and Campuses Best Practices Clearinghouse to provide a place where all of those transformational things are happening in real time.

Educators and community-based organizations can share in real time during the Best Practices Clearinghouse across the country. And at the end of the day, our role at the department is to understand what is and isn’t working on the ground. Then we can lift up the best practices and make connections, so those best practices become sustainable, scalable, transformational strategies that are, as you say, most effective when they’re liberatory, solidarity-driven, and equity-focused.

KAREN L. MAPP: And you know, when I was working I was very honored to have worked as a consultant to the U.S. DOE during the Obama administration, working for Jim Shelton at the time. There was a lot of questions on the part of the department as to how the department could be most helpful. And what I did was I actually went around to every single program and interviewed them and asked them, “What do you think the field needs?”

And that led to the development of the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, that got launched in 2014. (I have since revised it.) What are some of the other ways, and you know, I know there’s been talk about an office for family engagement in the department and positions. What are some of the other things that — you’ve mentioned quite a few — what are some of the other things that you see in the future that the department may be planning or talking about to help change the practice out there in the field around family engagement?

CINDY MARTEN: Yeah, well, thank you, Dr. Mapp. And just — I like the way that you, when you go about doing your research, you go out in the field, and you talk to people doing the work. And that’s it, in my perspective, great, great foundational research. That’s why people want to turn to you around what works and how that’s so helpful and effective.

And so yeah, in your collaboration previously in the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, that came out, and that was a tool for the field. And like I mentioned earlier, there was volume two that we put out and the reopening handbook that provides all those useful strategies for family engagement. And that’s our intention is keep putting those out there. We also released an FAQ on the ESSER and the GEER funds. And in that we clarified that the funds may be used in multiple ways to strengthen family engagement. So we know by showing some examples there, localities are able to think about how to go about the things that we know work the best. So what you’ll see is the department’s going to continue to provide ongoing technical assistance. And we’ll do that through … through the department’s Statewide Family Engagement Centers.

And we’re also supporting and highlighting something great that’s happening across the country right now, as we just are about to turn the calendars to July. We’re highlighting the effective summer learning and enrichment programs that we’re seeing for students. And those are including family engagement through … if you don’t know about it already, you can find out about the Summer Learning and Enrichment Collaborative — with nearly all 50 states and territories participating in that. And we’ve got state, school districts, community-based organizations, and all these great partners that have been part of the summer learning experiences — and they’re participating in sessions that are going to highlight the best practices in family engagement. And that’s part — that’s a core part of the collaborative, it’s not an afterthought or a subnote or like a footnote. It’s core to what we’re doing within the work that we see going on across the country, around summer learning experience.

And then coming up, we’re going to release more guidance on reopening equitably, what that’s going to look like for various communities. And especially, we’re focused on the ones that have experienced some of the unique or most significant losses or trauma. And so we’re looking at more guidance on … mental health guidance that will be coming out, equity for students with disabilities guidance. We also have some coming out about how to address the impact of the lost instructional time or unfinished learning. And then using the ARP funds to support full-service community schools. And that’s — family engagement has to be a part of it. That’s a foundational component. So all of that guidance about family engagement … it’s the only way that we can go forward is to put good clear guidance around that and show how it’s going to help our recovery efforts.

KAREN L. MAPP: Thank you for that — and please call me Karen. So if I … if I get to call you Cindy, you definitely should call me Karen. No … Dr. Mapp. So I do have a question for you about the ESSER funds, because I hear sometimes from parents, particularly, that they are very confused about how to get engaged with the decision-making. Some of them said, “Oh, you know, the first round of proposals already was … had to go in. So I guess there’s no other way for me to be engaged.” What advice would you give for families? And then also, I know some school districts are struggling as well. What do you think are some of the best ways that families can be engaged in the process and ways that — maybe some ways you’ve seen — that you think have been really transformational?

CINDY MARTEN: We know the most important family engagement that is really decided locally and different org … districts and schools and states come up with all kinds of different ways that are meaningful to our families.

And it’s hard to say one exact perfect strategy. But lots of experience have been out there. And we’ve learned a lot during this pandemic. We recently heard about principals that had a harder time having families come to school for a family Friday or some family event. But they were … because they were able to provide technology, we were having families tune in and join these engagement strategies.

And so I think it’s important to look at … when we look at family engagement, and it being a priority for the federal recovery funds: it’s an area of investment, we’re encouraging districts to involve families in decision-making. So how does that work? Well, remember that all of the emergency federal funding for schools that’s been released over the last year has an explicit, allowable use for any activity funded under ESSER and IDEA, including family engagement.

So the funding is there, the urgency is there. And what we want to do is encourage schools to purposefully, meaningfully, authentically engage their communities in planning and ask your communities: What’s meaningful to them? What’s authentic to them? What’s purposeful to them? That’s why we’ve included in a lot of what we’re putting out specific information on family engagement throughout the department’s guidance on all of the allowable uses for these federal recovery funds because we’re innovating at a pace like we’ve never seen before.

And through this innovation, solutions are emerging that — pre-pandemic — we may … may have taken decades to come up with, and things are coming … we’re coming up with things that are actually working very quickly. And I think it’s essential that all of our schools and students are able to receive the resources — that get the technical assistance, that get the supports necessary — so they can plan and implement their re-entry strategies, but using district school leaders to consistently, authentically, meaningfully engage our parents in our community, all the way throughout the process.

You’ve got to pay close attention to our communities that’ve been disproportionately burdened by COVID-19 and lean in on that, and see what’s actually resonating with the families, so they’re part of the path forward. Not something being done to our schools and families, and not for our families and communities, but doing it with them is the best path forward.

KAREN L. MAPP: Yes, thank you. And I know that, you know, a lot of us have heard that expression, but it’s the actual deploying it, right? Doing things with and not to. And I wanted to ask you, you know, some of the things I’ve been asking educators, particularly over the last nine months, have been, “What have … what have you learned from this pandemic around family engagement? What are some of the lessons learned?” So both as a not-that-long-ago superintendent, and now in the department, what are some of the things that you’ve heard or you’ve experienced yourself?

CINDY MARTEN: A lifelong teacher here, you’re talking to, I was a classroom teacher.

KAREN L. MAPP: Right.

CINDY MARTEN: Seventeen years, it was 10 years at an elementary school, and a lifelong learner and teacher loves to talk about lessons learned. So, that’s what we do as teachers, and we sort of instill the lifelong learning in everybody that we work with. And so this is one of my favorite questions to always answer, and I’m a very reflective practitioner, I like to reflect on what’s happening.

And I think I keep changing lessons learned, as I learn more and more and hear from what people have taught me. But one of the biggest lessons I have to say that we’ve learned in this last year — and that we knew, but we didn’t have the tools or the solutions prior to COVID — is that there has to be intentional relationship-building.

I already know that as a teacher. I knew that as a principal. I knew it as a superintendent. But what does that actually look like? And what we’ve learned in the last year, what are the tools that actually will help us lean into intentional relationship-building? Because what you’ll see is that schools and districts and teachers and families, we say we want to come to the table, and we want to work together — and in spite of that, there has to be a willingness to be vulnerable.

People have to understand where there are issues of trust and acknowledge those. And we have to understand that students have experienced — students and their families and communities have all experienced this pandemic differently. And they’re going to re … they’re going to experience the reopening differently. A lot of times, people say, “We’re all in the same boat. We all went through COVID.”

We’re not in the same boat. We’re in the same storm during COVID, but we were in different boats. And we understand where everybody is so we can truly meet one another in these moments of crisis, but there’s great heart and great empathy, and that the lessons learned inside of that, about this intentional relationship-building that starts with empathy, and understanding, and willingness to be vulnerable and admit where trust is broken, how to repair it — then we can adjust, then we can ensure that each and every student is supported effectively to what will meet their needs. And then they can feel that they’re returning to a safe and inclusive learning environment. We can’t talk about lessons learned if we don’t acknowledge the fact that prior to COVID, for so many students of color, that schools were not safe places for them.

We know from our Office for Civil Rights at Ed that students of color, we know, are disproportionately suspended compared to their peers. And that these differences are — a lot of times — they’re a result of the perceptions of student behavior, rather than actual differences in their behavior. So we’ve seen a significant increase in bullying and harassment. We know that recently has an uptick towards our Asian students, these concerns have to be addressed.

And there are teachers — I’ve heard beautiful stories, both in San Diego and across the country, about teachers through home visits and virtual meetings — have met parents and caregivers that they’ve never seen before, and who maybe they would have never seen otherwise, because of work schedules and language barriers or whatever the case. But now we know, because we’ve lived it, that it’s possible to reach families that before we hadn’t reached, for reasons, maybe no fault of anybody’s, but we’ve reached them. And it’s too much of a cliché, If you can’t reach ’em, you can’t teach ’em. But that’s quite literally during the pandemic, if we couldn’t reach them, we weren’t teaching them. So by extension, we couldn’t reach our families, we weren’t reaching their students.

And it’s these creative new tactics, that we’ve all gotten super-proficient, well, mostly this is a new tool here. But we’ve learned all these different ways that we can connect with each other. And we’ve all gotten proficient at that, and we cannot lose that progress. What we’ve really learned is that the student, parent, caregiver, teacher — those connections that we always knew mattered, they can be strengthened.

And when they can be strengthened, great things can happen and you’re very right, Karen, too, in your research and what you’ve lifted up in this … your report is that professional development matters, purposeful outreach, equitable resource allocation. And let’s make sure that this is all … all of those things that we know we need to do, it’s all supported by the American Rescue Plan and other emergency funding.

KAREN L. MAPP: Well, you know that it is music to my ears to hear you talk about this intentional relationship-building, because that is the one piece — and you know it’s at the top of our essential conditions in the framework — but that is the one piece that I see our schools and our districts skip over so many times. And one of my colleagues, Dr. Soo Hong, who is at Wellesley, in a wonderful book that she’s written called Natural Allies, she talks about that generational trauma that a lot of our families have experienced from back when they were in school or even beyond that.

And the only way to break down that … that feeling of trauma and disrespect, quite frankly, is through this intentional focus on building the relational trust. So this is fabulous. And I think I’m getting our warning that this portion of our wonderful conversation, which I hope we can have again sometime soon, is up, and I’m going to turn it — but thank you so much, Cindy — and I’m going to turn it back over to Kavitha.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Thank you so much, both of you. Cindy, I love that image that we are not all in the same boat. We are all … we might have been in the same storm. You know, we know some kids have been on rafts, and some kids are in yachts. And there’s a big difference. So thank you so much.

We have a few minutes left and several questions that we’ve gathered from community members in advance. So, Karen and Cindy, we really appreciate you taking the time to answer a few of them. This one is for Cindy. Cindy, you had briefly touched on money, but this is from a parent. How much federal money will school districts get for family engagement? How are they going to be distributed? What’s the timeline?

CINDY MARTEN: Specific dollar amounts for schools and districts? I don’t think I’ll get into those exact numbers. But what I can tell you is, this is … it’s a super-important process question. Because parents are asking about how are these recovery funds can be used to provide certain things like, “Can they be used for smaller class sizes or elective like arts and music?” It was something your team had asked me ahead of this, and I know a parent had submitted that question. It’s important for people to understand that the flexibility of the emergency funds usage through ARP and ESSER is one of the most important parts of the law. The flexibility is clear, and it allows for local educational agencies to work together to tailor their spending to meet the needs of their students locally, the students and their community.

So it’s really important that we’re making sure parents and caregivers are all part of the people most impacted by spending — the decisions. Spending decisions need to have a seat at that table. That’s why we have a lot of the departments requiring states to meaningfully engage with parents and caregivers when they’re developing these state plans. And these funds are going to … I think we have one more question about that for follow up. Yeah.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: I did. I wanted to know, what is the timeline? 

CINDY MARTEN: Yep. The local … so the local education agencies are in partnership right now with their states. And they have to develop plans to equitably address the impact of COVID in their communities. And like I said earlier, parents and caregivers: input is expected. Most states have submitted their proposals to the Department of Ed for review. And those plans right now are undergoing review and approval.

You can find your state’s plan at oese.ed.gov. And at least 20 percent of the funds have to be reserved to address the impact of lost instructional time — and that’s through the implementation of the evidence-based interventions. Ensure that the interventions respond to students social, emotional, mental health, academic needs, the “whole child” approach to that — and so that we are addressing those that have had the disproportionate impact during COVID-19.

There’s additional funds that can be used for lots of other activities that have happened during the pandemic. You can have … across anything that was supported in ESEA, IDEA, adult education, family literacy, the Perkins career technical grants. All of the funds can be used for a wide range of activities, but they have to be used to address more immediate needs of students, as well as making investments that are going to lead to long-term system change.

And what we’re looking for is building capacity at the local level. So there’s lots of great examples out there of how these funds are going to address learning losses and needs of students across our communities.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Karen, the next is a question for you from a policymaker. What kinds of family engagement training do educators and school staff need? And where can they turn to this type of programming, so, you know, “parents as partners” is not just a buzzword?

KAREN L. MAPP: Well, a lot of our school districts are actually beginning to embed pretty serious professional development into both their induction program. So for example, the School District of Philadelphia did a wonderful presentation a few weeks ago at the IEL Family Engagement Conference, where their teaching and learning team talked about how in their induction of new teachers, there is a pretty significant curriculum around family engagement — talking about the things that Cindy and I talked about today. And these are some of the things that the districts can think about when they think about how to use their new funding.

There are also a lot of opportunities. I do an institute every summer, where we bring in educators from all over the world, actually, for a four-week program. We are starting through NAFSCE to really talk to states about making sure that our higher ed institutions that are training our new teachers are starting to embed family engagement curriculum into those programs. So I think we’re seeing a full-court press in many areas around the country, to try to make sure that not only our teachers, but our new principals and our superintendents are getting good, strong professional development.

But it does have to be a commitment, in many cases, on a part of the district to build in that infrastructure to make sure that training — just like all other trainings  — takes place. Also, coaching is very important. A lot of districts are now employing their family engagement liaisons to do coaching at schools for the professionals in the building. So I’ve seen a lot of really good ideas around this, but it does take some intentionality.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Karen, this is kind of a follow-up from what you were talking about. You know, you had talked about in your report that family engagement needs to be sewn into the fabric of school life. And so if parents want a say in curriculum decisions, like prioritizing diversity in books or the type of books their children read, what can be done to make sure that they have a say in these academic decisions?

KAREN L. MAPP: Well, this is where the solidarity-driven part of the new normal comes in. And I think what I’ve been hearing is that since educators were basically in the living rooms of the homes, and they started to realize that parents actually know more, see more, understand more, and made contributions to the instruction, I think we’re going to see more and more schools and districts set up intentional opportunities for families to weigh in.

For those of you who may not see that opportunity, I suggest you get together, groups of families get together, hopefully, diverse groups of families will get together and go to the schools and say, you know, we have some really — we think we have some really good ideas.

We saw a lot about our children’s learning and different strategies while we were at home, and we’d like to share those with you. You know, I always try to start out with a positive before we maybe push a little harder, if you know what I mean. But I do think, again, that a lot of our schools are going to be a lot more open to really hearing from families, because my goodness, they learned so much from families about teaching and learning during the pandemic.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: And we’re going to end with a question for Cindy. Cindy, do you have any plans to measure progress for family engagement? Is there a rubric or other assessment to see how districts actually are doing?

CINDY MARTEN: You know, it’s always important that we are able to get feedback on how this is going. Specific plans for that yet? It’s hard to speak to that right now. But we know the importance. That’s why Karen’s research matters. Research matters. And what we’re seeing is the most — we have anecdotal evidence from the field right now about what’s working, and hearing from our families is what’s most important. But specific rubrics? It’s too soon for me to talk about that.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Well, we’re out of time for this portion of the forum. So Madam Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten and Dr. Karen Mapp, thank you so much for joining us, we really appreciate it.

Next up, we have two guests who represent both ends of the bridge on the home to school connection. Pedro Martinez is the superintendent of the San Diego Independent School District and chair of Chiefs for Change, a member organization that represents the heads of local and state school districts nationwide.

Also, Keri Rodrigues, the founding president of the National Parents Union, which is a network of parent organizations and family advocates working to improve the quality of education for children. Welcome, Pedro and Keri, thanks so much for joining us. Let’s start with the biggest issue of the day: the impact of the pandemic.

Pedro, when it came to connecting with parents during the pandemic, very briefly: what worked, what didn’t, and what are you going to use in the next year?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: Sure, Kavitha. Thank you for having me. You know, I think what worked for us here in San Antonio was the fact that we had been building trust with parents, and when this pandemic hit we were able to pivot. For example, we distributed 40,000 devices to … we serve about 48,000 children. And we were able to partner with parents to set up programs very quickly.

As the school year started, we started remote. And parents trusted us to gradually phase in children. We were able to get COVID testing in November, we started at a few schools and then at all schools. It’s interesting. We have some amazing data that showed that not only were we able to keep our schools open, but our positivity rates were well under one percent, even when our community was at 23 percent.

And so we slowly built up the number so that we ended at over 50 percent of our children in person, but it was that trust that we built with parents. And for us, we learned a lot of lessons as we navigated through the pandemic. But I think number one is: families felt that the children were safe. Our teachers felt that the children were safe. And of course, now we’re partnering for next year as we think about next year.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: That kind of goes to what Karen was talking about earlier, that trust is really the cornerstone.

PEDRO MARTINEZ: Yes, you know, the one thing I’ll tell you, Kavitha, and this is what I tell my colleagues across even our members, you have to be able to assess the trust level you have with your parents — not only for this year that we just finished, which was so difficult for everybody, but even as we go into next year. And one of the things that I worry about as I look at the national landscape — districts vary significantly, especially in urban cities, whether they were able to open, when they were able to open, whether they were able to keep the schools open.

And for us, and we’re very fortunate that we never lost the trust of our teachers or our parents throughout the year — but I’ll tell you it still was an incredibly difficult year. And like I said we at least were open the whole year.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Keri, the next question is for you. Family engagement typically means parents are invited to fundraisers or to, you know, parent-teacher conferences. They’re seen and often not heard. How can schools change this dynamic?

KERI RODRIGUES: This is the question that we’re often asked. Until we move from really intentionally wanting to have transformational relationships with parents, not just transactional, but really, truly transformational relationships and that mindset, we’re never going to get the outcomes that we’re seeking.

So to do that, we are going to have to address the deep trauma and generational institutional racism that has deeply impacted our communities via our U.S. education system. Because we are not acknowledging the fact that the mistrust on the part of families and parents across this country comes from our firsthand experience of being former students in many of these classrooms. So when we throw up our hands and say, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t understand why parents don’t want to engage with us.” That’s because we’ve often got ghosts in the classroom from our own experiences.

We’ve experienced racism. We’ve experienced being underserved in the system — and there’s no acknowledgement. So until we have an acknowledgement of that elephant in the room, that, you know, parents understand what they’re pushing their kids into — and now we’re, frankly, pretty scared, and filled with fear about what they’re going to have to face on their own — we’re never going to have the kinds of relationships that we’re looking for from parents.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: And what would you suggest if you had like — quick — three quick tips, teachers or school districts could use to kind of welcome parents in and to say, like, “We want to be partners.” What would they be?

KERI RODRIGES: Well, if you want to, you know, be trusted, you have to do trustworthy things. It’s really that simple. Parents aren’t that complicated. We’re human beings. So if you want to build relationships with us, you have to be a good friend. You want to be a friend with parents and families, you have to do things that our worthy of our trust. So you’ve got to listen.

And not just around the things that you feel that you “should” get input on. But the things that are important to us. Right now, our national parenting polling says that 86 percent of parents and families want individualized education plans for their children to help deal with unfinished learning during the pandemic.

They want to know where their child is, and how we’re going to get them to an outcome that provides equitable opportunity for every child in the country. That’s 86 percent of parents and families. Why are we not using some of our ESSER funding around that?

You know, things like making sure we have access to high-speed Internet, not the 10-dollar Internet, but high-quality Internet and technology. Again, 87 percent of families saying they want that. We’re very clear about what we’re looking for for our children. And we don’t need you to empathize with our situations. We need you to hear our context, and really view us as peers — and frankly, understand the fact that we’re very invested in our children and we want to be treated as adults.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Keri, actually you jumped ahead, because that’s a perfect segue. That was actually going to be my next question. Pedro, maybe you can take a stab at that. What are you hearing from parents about their concerns and priorities for the fall?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: So I completely agree with Keri. One of the things that we have seen … so I’m not … I see it as a coin. On one side: our conversations between parents and teachers have never been stronger. We have a Parent Advisory Group that we leveraged throughout the entire year, and they were a valuable resource for us and my staff.

On the other side of the coin: proficiency rates are the lowest we’ve ever seen, and gaps have never been wider. As somebody said earlier, we were all — Cindy said this — we were all in the same storm, but on very different vehicles. Some were on rafts, some were on yachts. And the reality is we’re seeing that in the proficiency scores. And for us, what I’m sharing with my staff,  it’s a great opportunity though — because parents now are at the table. They are active.

And by the way, you know, one example I have this last year: we had a lot of seniors that were at risk at the beginning of the first semester, and parents and counselors and teachers worked together. And we got almost 100 percent of them through this last year with a record number of scholarships. That happened because we were working with parents. So I just believe that this next year, it’s a great opportunity to continue to partner with parents.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Pedro, my next question is also for you. How is your district planning to use the federal recovery funds to address the needs of students, particularly since we’re talking about family engagement, around family engagement?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: So this really came directly from parents and teachers. And so there were a couple of big areas that they wanted us to invest in. Number one: social and mental … social and emotional and mental health support. We will have direct therapy at every one of our schools. And teams of therapists, as well as social workers, at each of our high schools because we’re seeing some of the biggest needs there with our older children.

In addition, parents said we need, frankly we need more instructional time. They approved earlier in the year 30 additional instructional days in our calendar, and that was parents and teachers working together. Every school now has developed their own plan for our first-year recovery.

We also are making sure that — and we’re sharing this —  that we have a four-year plan. In other words, we cannot resolve the unfinished learning in one year, it has to be over multiple years. So we have — we’ve set up our resource over four years. And then the last is really ensuring that we have more teachers. So we have doubled down on the arts, on extracurriculars. My children missed those programs at the beginning of the year when we couldn’t get them started because of COVID. In addition, we also are reducing class size in some of the schools that already were struggling before COVID started.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: So very, very practical steps to kind of meet students’ needs. Keri, some families hear about strengthening family engagement, and they feel, you know, we’re already doing as much as we can, and this year has kind of been brutal for parents. How can we give parents a meaningful voice without making them feel overwhelmed? Like, oh, this is a whole second job for you or a whole third job for you.

KERI RODRIGUES: You know, I think that is a really kind of strange misconception, as if, you know, all of a sudden we are no longer going to be engaged, we’re just going to throw up our hands and say everything’s fine.

Again, according to our national parenting in polling — we’ve done this national polling now eighteen times. It is quite clear: 64 percent of families say that they are more engaged now than they ever have been ever before.

Eight in 10 saying that this has been an eye-opening experience that they expect to move into the future being more engaged and more involved in what is happening in  their schools. And that is because all of this played out in our living room. So it was no … it was no longer anecdotal.

It was no more, you know, asking your kids, “Hey, what did you do at school today?” We were literally listening every single minute to what was happening. And frankly, a lot of us were very concerned about what we saw. The other thing, you know, we’re also talking about, you know, parents and families not wanting to re-enroll or not wanting to re-engage with the public systems.

You hear a lot of people, including the deputy secretary talking about, we need to engage parents so that they get back in schools. Well, this moment has also revealed for many parents and families that, you know, having an opportunity to access education outside of … having to deal with systemic racism in the classroom, and bullying, and a lack of personalized attention, distractions in the classroom — all of these things.

We’ve found different options that have worked better for our children. And again, going back to our polling, because we’re constantly in conversation with parents all across the country, including our 500 affiliates in all 50 states. They’re telling us that they’ve been to the Promised Land.

And they want more say around the educational options that are available, how education — just in terms of how it’s delivered — they want a voice in that. Because now that we have kind of freed our children from some of the … some of the really harsh realities of having to deal with disproportionate discipline, unfair suspensions that happen, even in the deputy secretary’s home district of San Diego — none of these things have been addressed.

So again, there are a lot of things that parents and families are interested in engaging with our education system around, not just around the things that the education system feels like they “want” to engage parents with. So if you want to have a conversation with us, it has to be a two-way conversation. It can’t just be systems talking at us. It has to be with us.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Um-hum, um-hum. Let’s go to — we’ve got about 10, 15 minutes left, and I’d like to take some questions submitted by audience members before the forum.

So this is for both of you. Pedro, you can start if you like. It’s from a parent. Can you give us practical examples of events, programs, or other creative ways for engaging parents more fully in school communities? And then policy decisions?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: Yes, so number, one for us: I’ve had a Parent Advisory that has been involved since the beginning. They helped us with our reopening plan. So we plan to add just more members because it’s just been so effective. The other is the fact that we need to provide teachers more time to be able to have conversation with parents.

My teachers doing God’s work. I mean, I saw quite a bit of evidence where they were texting and emailing parents and having conversations, you know, at 10:00 at night, 12:00 at night. And for me that really is a message that we have to set up our school days and our school year in a way where parents have the ability to talk with our teachers on a regular basis. And so that’s something we’re thinking about right now is setting up that time so that it’s very intentional.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: I really love the … you talking about teachers and how hard they’ve been working. This has really been something kind of overwhelming and I covered teachers saying they’re really stressed, and mental health is … is a big deal. So thank you.

Keri, what examples would you say? Do you have any examples from maybe affiliates across the country that are doing a really good job or districts that are doing a good job?

KERI RODRIGUES: Well, there are some states that have done a good job of saying we intentionally want to build in parent seats into our conversation around how ESSER funding is going to be directed, what parents and families really want. And doing it in a way that is not just box checking, or handing out surveys, but literally sitting down and listening to parents.

And that’s the problem, you’ve got to work with a lot of the affiliates that are members of the National Parenting Union and other parent activist groups and advocates in order to build those relationships — because we are trusted ambassadors. There are many parents that are unwilling to engage with our districts, that are unwilling to engage with even the deputy of education —  because the trust has been broken.

So work with, you know, your local parent advocates, sit down, have a meaningful conversation, but don’t go in there with an agenda just saying, “Well, you know, these are the things that we’ve decided, we’re here to get your feedback.” Go in with … and intentionally listen to what parents and families actually want. We’re willing to reset that conversation when there’s acknowledgment of the deep harm and trauma that has gone on and been perpetuated by these systems.

But don’t just … wait to talk, you know, you’ve got to have your ears open and say, “Okay, we understand you, parents and families.” I hear Pedro talking about the social emotional supports that he’s adding into his plan around using that ESSER money. Again, polling really, really highly among American families and parents — we’re very concerned about the mental health of our children — and making sure that money is allocated properly is going to be critical.

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have an incredible amount of money flooding into our districts. Let’s make sure we include parents and families in the conversation so that money actually hits the classroom and doesn’t get wasted on consultants.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Um-hum. This is another question for both of you. When we reimagine school and family connections, what should we be doing specifically to support families of students with learning differences?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: So I think, number one — you know what Keri said is really important — is we have to have conversations with parents, and it has to be a personalized plan. In our district, every school has developed their own individual plan where teachers and parents are driving the conversations. And what I’ve asked my board and my team is … be ready to pivot. In other words, when parents and teachers decide, hey, we need to do something different: we need to do a Saturday program, an after-school program — whatever that is — that we’re there to support and provide resources. And then we continue just to help and support. And so for us, making sure that we don’t have one plan, but that it’s really customized by school with parents and teachers really driving it.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Um-hum. I also wanted to ask about English learners. Is there anything you would like to add, Pedro, before we go to Keri?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: Yes. So I will tell you, this is the area that we’re probably one of the strongest. We have one of the largest and fastest growing dual-language programs in the country. And one of the reasons it’s so effective is that it has always been driven by parents and teachers. Our special needs children have struggled quite a bit. And that’s an area, frankly, that we’re investing significantly this year.

And so one of the … one of our goals is to really authentically engage those parents —because, by the way, those are our most active parents in most districts. And so for us, we actually have plans that are customized for both our English language learners and our special ed students.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Keri, any ideas on how you would like to … you would like to see schools supporting English learners and children with special needs.

KERI RODRIGUES: Well, I want to first shout out to the special needs community. I am a mom of children with special needs. That’s how I got into advocacy. And having a child with special needs, they don’t hand you a pamphlet that decodes all the language or teaches you how to be an advocate. You just become one in your DNA. So these are extraordinary people that are advocating for their children every single day, even in prepandemic time, and they do a heroic job for their children.

There has been deep harm to that community. And we also have to acknowledge that — in very significant ways — children with special needs were not accommodated very well during the pandemic. And just like, unfortunately, the first three months of the pandemic, at the end … from about March of 2020 until the end of the school year, we saw school districts across this country have a system failure. And basically throw up their hands saying we need grace. We don’t know what to do. That happened in the special needs community. And it continued to happen throughout the course of this year. And I can tell you that from a firsthand perspective. So I would suggest that every district has to go back and re-evaluate every child who has special needs —  to reinvigorate their individualized education plan, to provide services.

We’ve had a lot of kids who unfortunately have regressed during this period. That has to be acknowledged. It cannot be glossed over. And these children need significant investment in their special needs — you know, programming and all the accommodations, we’re going to need all hands on deck to help them in the coming years to deal with unfinished learning, and, unfortunately, a lot of regression that we’ve seen.

So having an honest conversation, again, if you want to be “friends” with parents, you want to engage with us in a meaningful way: be honest about what was good, what was bad. And the number one thing I can say to folks is we want to know that you care about our children. That’s why we’re talking about individualized education plans for every single child.

We want to know that you are invested in our kids, and we will be your partners to the very end. Because we want our kids to succeed. You don’t have to teach us how to be interested in our children. You don’t have to teach us to care about our children. We do. We want to be partners, but we want to be treated with respect and as equal members of the team.

So whether it’s a family that English is not their primary language, or they’re new to the country, or it’s a family with a child with special needs: be honest, understand that we are mothers and fathers, tias and abuelitas who are coming here because we care deeply about our children, and we want to do what’s best for them.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Pedro, how can we approach this work, you know, family engagement, sustainably? So it’s not a kind of like one term like — let’s do it as long as the funds are there, and … and then it’s gone. Sorry, can you start again, Pedro? I didn’t hear you.

PEDRO MARTINEZ: So sorry. One of the … for us … first of all, it started with pointing to the successes. Because we built trust with parents this last year, for example, I can show all my schools: look what happened to all of our seniors that were at risk. Not only did we get them to the finish line, we had the largest graduating class ever in our district’s history.

And so for us that was because we partner with parents. As we look at this next year, I know that, for example, in July, we’re starting two-week intercession programs with over 12,000 students. We’ve never had summer programs of more than a couple thousand children.

Why? Because parents or teachers are working together and the plans are personalized. So I think it’s pointing to those successes, training teachers, giving them the time to be able to talk with parents, building that into the school year — those are going to be some of our main strategies. And those are not expensive. Those we can sustain.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: And this is a question for both of you — maybe, Keri, if you start. A lot of parents have said that distance learning gave them a better sense of their child’s strengths and struggles. Like you said, they were right there in the classroom, or in the living room with their children. When in-person learning resumes, how will teachers, or how can teachers ensure that parents stay informed about how their children are doing?

KERI RODRIGUES: Well, let’s take a step back and not just inform us — but we have a lot of information about our children. You need that information. You should want that information. And again, if you’re a child, or if you’re a mother of a child or a father of a child with special needs, you know a BASC-3, where a parent is really intimately involved in the assessment because you need our data about what we’re seeing at home.

Again, if we are to listen to parents — and 86 percent of them calling for individualized education plans for their kids — a 360-degree assessment that includes parent engagement and parent reflection and our information and our assessment of our children, and includes student assessment about how they think they’re doing and what their experiences are and how they did — that should be a part of the plan that we put together for our children. So again, if you want us to engage with you, it’s got to be a two-way conversation. And that is what’s missing. There are a lot of folks that want to talk at us because they think they know better than us. They’re in this, you know … in this situation there are a lot of folks that are very well meaning but do not understand our context, do not understand our families, do not understand our cultures. And so that’s why it’s got to be a two-way situation.

You cannot empathize your way into parent engagement. You’ve got to open your ears. You’ve got to listen. And frankly, you have to have the mindset that maybe we have something valuable to contribute. And I think that’s really what’s missing from a lot of these conversations is that it’s … it’s … you know, really thought that we don’t have anything of value to contribute, that we should just be talked at and executing whatever the plan is from, you know, the school leader or from the … the classroom leader. We have a lot to contribute. And if we’re treated in a respectful way, we’re willing to engage.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: I always do this at the end of any interview I do, I ask the people I’m interviewing is there … what is a final thought? What would you like to leave me with? Pedro, what would you say that is — for you?

PEDRO MARTINEZ: So I think, number one: this is going to be a long … a long road. So we can’t assume we’re going to fix things in a very short time period. The other is that there’s an amazing opportunity because parents are at the table. We’ve seen — my teachers have seen directly — the amazing benefits when you treat parents as partners, because the reality is that whether they’re high school students or they’re students in my primary grades, when we work together, our children, as stressed as they were, frankly, we just saw more success.

And for us as we open the next school year, it is going to be more important than ever, that the trust is there, that children — that parents feel that children are going to be safe. And more importantly, that we’re going to be there to pivot and adjust. Don’t have one plan, have a — not only a personalized plan — but be ready to pivot as needs arise, because we’re just learning with the first year after COVID, what it’s going to be.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: And Keri, what last thoughts would you like to share?

KERI RODRIGUES: I think it’s more of a warning. And that is that, you know, parents and families have been to the Promised Land of engagement. And that doesn’t mean engagement with the system. That means engagement with our child’s education. And that’s not toothpaste that we’re putting back in the tube. We have seen parents and families step up to the plate, because, frankly, K–6 education was not happening in this country without facilitation and support from parents and families across this nation. And we have had a lot of self-determination around what level of education, what environmental context our kids were going to have when they engaged with education, whether or not our kids should go back in person or stay at home, whether we should layer in culturally competent curriculum on top of what we were seeing play out in our living rooms.

So that’s not going to be something you can … that self-determination is not something that you’re going to take away from us very easily. So it would be my suggestion to engage with us as partners. Don’t do things to us without us — or else you’re going to get a very feisty pushback from parents who have awoken across this country.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Well, thank you so much, Pedro and Keri, we really appreciate the very practical insights into how family engagement has played out among families and at the district level. We’re going to wrap up our forum with a few words from LaVerne Srinivasan, the vice president who oversees the education program at Carnegie Corporation of New York.

LAVERNE SRINIVASAN: Thank you so much, Kavitha. It’s such a pleasure to have the opportunity to wrap up this conversation. It has been a rich set of learnings and experiences. And we heard it from the beginning, from Dr. Mapp — it’s a call to action. We need to listen. We need to build the trust and relationships with our families and communities that’s going to make the difference.

It’s the respect that everyone wants, educators and parents. It’s something that we can do. It’s not an assessment. It’s not a check the box as you heard. It’s not a survey. It is an opportunity for us in this country to grasp hold … grasp hold of what we’ve experienced over the last 15 to 16 months and say we can do something different than we’ve done before. We can be better. We can do better for our students, our families, our educators — and all of us are accountable for that.

We don’t need a rubric for it. But we do need to pay attention and we are not going to put the toothpaste, as Keri told us, back into the toothpaste tube. We are not going to exceed … excel in this work, as Pedro and Dr. Marten have told us without — excuse me, Deputy Secretary Marten have told us without building the trust, the relationships that we need as a foundation.

And Dr. Mapp, we cannot do this unless it’s liberatory, solidarity-driven, and equity-focused. I want to thank our speakers and our partners, Chiefs for Change, the Education Writers Association, the National Association for Families, School and Community Engagement, and the National Center for Families Learning. And I’d like to thank all of our speakers today — again — for a rich conversation filled with advice and opportunities for us to do better. Kavitha, back to you.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: As a reminder, you can download the report using your phone to scan the QR code on the screen, or by visiting carnegie.org/newnormal2021. In addition, today’s forum will be available as video on demand by the Corporation’s YouTube page immediately after the webinar, if you’d like to share that with your communities. And a transcript will also be posted soon. A few programming notes: visit carnegie.org to learn more about Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Education Program and its portfolio of family engagement grantees, and future livestream events. You’re invited to stay in touch by signing up for the foundation’s newsletter at carnegie.org/signup. I’m Kavitha Cardoza, your moderator, thanks so much for joining us.