Franklin Regional sees benefits of 'Parents as Allies' program

Members of a family that just moved to the Franklin Regional School District from overseas might not have the confidence to get up at a school board meeting and ask a question.

But get a few of those families together for dinner at a local Italian restaurant, and conversations start a lot more quickly.

That was part of the idea behind Franklin Regional officials joining the “Parents as Allies” program, organized by Pittsburgh nonprofit Kidsburgh, in 2021. It is a collaboration between a number of education-centered groups and nonprofits.

“It was really focused on parent engagement,” said Franklin Regional Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Baginski. “The Brookings Institute came and talked with us about the international research they’d done on parent engagement in schools, and how parents come to feel disenfranchised or disconnected.”

Franklin Regional staff began looking at “small, meaningful actions that could make a difference for small groups of people,” Baginski said. “And that felt a lot more doable.”

Through a survey sent to parents of students in grades 3-5, Baginski said the district’s first foray into the program would center on its English language learner student families, who were organized into about a half dozen focus groups of about 12 parents each.

“One of the main things we heard was the importance of two-way communications,” Baginski said. “Parents told us the district communicates things well — although there are always things we can clean up — but that listening to parents is not always something we’ve excelled at.”

Franklin Regional English Language Development teacher Brandi Sberna said she identified several English language learner families she knew were more comfortable interacting with school district officials.

“They kind of became our ‘core’ families,” she said. “We asked them to help us plan some of these events moving forward.”

Those included a social event at Brushes and Beans in Murrysville, and Sberna said it was very encouraging to see a number of students and families she didn’t recognize from other Franklin Regional events.

An informal dinner with English language learner families at Pasqualino’s in Murrysville served as one of the biggest learning experiences of the whole process, Baginski said.

“We heard little things like families saying, ‘I don’t know the rules of baseball so I didn’t enroll my child in it,’ to a desire for us to provide resources for parents to learn more about the culture and opportunities in the area,” she said.

Sometimes an incoming family just needs to know how Franklin Regional is different from the school district they came from.

“We started inviting parents the Thursday after school starts to let them know what kind of resources we have available,” Baginski said. “That could be help filling out emergency contact cards or how to sign up for eSchool, our school information system.”

Other school districts that have joined the “Parents as Allies” initiative include Avonworth, Burrell, South Fayette, Duquesne City, Hopewell Area, West Allegheny, Woodland Hills, Shaler and more.

Baginski said Franklin Regional will continue with the “Parents as Allies” program in the foreseeable future, and will continue to receive funding from Kidsburgh to take part in it. That will involve identifying a new subgroup of parents.

“I think we need to have some conversations with stakeholders to determine what that next group will be,” said Franklin Regional Director of Instruction and Support Services Ryan Smith. “We now have secondary and elementary parent advisory committees, and we want to talk with them about what they’re hearing in the community. We want to listen to them, and then develop a structure similar to what we’ve been doing with our (English language learner) families.”

For more, see Kidsburgh.org and enter “parents allies Franklin Regional” in the search bar.