Parent Partner Program
The Parent Partner Program ensures that Latinx and Black families in San Francisco can be effective academic partners and advocates for their children on the path to college.
Through our community-based Promotora and Parent Engagement Coordinator models, parent leaders are creating a sustainable network of engaged families within San Francisco schools. Providing culturally-relevant tools and resources through peer-led workshops, our parents are supporting student academic success at school, in the home, and in the community.
Working on-site at 11 schools, the Parent Partner Program is developing a community of engaged, educated, and empowered parents and nurturing a college-going culture for San Francisco youth and families.
Contact us to join our parent engagement groups or learn more about the program!
Important Contacts & Links
Gaby Rodríguez
Program Director
Maria A. Rocha
Assistant Director
Programa Participación Parental
Spanish Language Facebook Page
Umoja Leaders
A Facebook resource page for Black/African-American families with children attending school in SFUSD
Program Highlights
While we are currently supporting families with Distance Learning, the Parent Partner Program’s activities are different than they would be during other years. Currently, all of our family engagement support activities are virtual and they include the following:
Community Leadership
Our Promotoras and Parent Engagement Coordinators encourage Latinx and African American family participation and leadership at schools through English Learner Advisory Committee (ELACs) and African American Parent Advisory Councils (AAPACs).
Support with Distance Learning
We schedule regular workshops, providing virtual, individualized support to families to overcome barriers they are experiencing to support their children’s distance learning objectives, such as navigating challenges with technology and accessing important community resources.
Community Resources
Through our Virtual Workshops, hosted on our social media pages (Programa Participación Parental and Umoja Leaders), we’re providing important, culturally and linguistically appropriate information to families about issues related to distance learning and community resources.
Personal & Professional Development
Our team of parent leaders receive ongoing training and coaching to promote the professional and personal development of each of these parents, while simultaneously helping us to accomplish stronger family engagement from our school sites.
Program Highlights
Working on-site at 14 schools, the Parent Partner Program is developing a community of engaged, educated, and empowered parents and nurturing a college going culture for Mission youth and families.
The program provides a comprehensive family engagement plan, including the following services:
Working with content that has been developed in collaboration with partners at UC Berkeley’s Center for Educational Partnerships, SFUSD Multi-lingual Pathways Department and Pulsing Word Consulting, we provide workshops for parents on over 20 different topics:
- Creating college expectations for all students
- Navigating available support systems to increase academic success
- Creating habits at home to support healthy development and create a strong foundation of learning
- Supporting positive communication, collaboration, and connections between parents, students, teachers, and the larger school community
Each workshop is aligned in format, language, and content, to your school’s current family engagement efforts. The series of workshops can be customized to meet the needs of families and school staff, and are conducted by trained parent-leaders with support from PPP staff. We also provide culturally-relevant food and childcare that parents can fully participate.
Our parent workshop series is unique among community organizations working onsite at schools, with content tailored to Latino families and an innovative delivery model-workshops delivered in Spanish (with optional translation into English) by a team of trained parent promotoras (peer educators), building a parent-to-parent network for student academic success.
To ensure ELACs continue to be effective spaces for an inclusive community of EL parents to gain relevant information and contribute recommendations, the Parent Partner Program has created leadership development opportunities for participating parents. Supporting content delivery and technical meeting assistance, PPP works to develop natural leaders within school communities to spearhead important ELL issues. We also ensure that ELACs maintain a strong 2-way communication with the Central District office by supporting ELAC leaders’ participation in the DELAC and sharing relevant resources and information with their school community.
Through weekly school-based ESL classes, parents develop the vocabulary and confidence to maintain positive relationships with their student’s teachers, school staff, and feel better able to support their child academically. Creating a culture of mutual support and encouragement, parents develop their own educational goals while learning how they can engage more easily with their school community.
Additional Services: Weekly Language Exchange classes – bringing English-speaking and Spanish-speaking families together for mutual learning opportunities.
Using a 1-to-1 model of digital literacy training, Spanish-speaking volunteers are trained to support parents in creating learning goals, and coming together twice a month to increase comfort levels, introduce online educational resources, and find new ways to integrate technology into family life. As parents feel they have a great understanding of technology, they will then become mentors themselves, teaching other parents in their school community, thus creating a self-sustaining and expanding community of parents learning different ways to engage with educational resources online.
Learn more about ways to get involved with the Latina Tech Mentorship Program.
Working with family engagement staff to develop agendas, prepare materials, provide recommendations to maximize outreach efforts, and support meeting facilitation, PPP staff helps partner schools have successful Town Hall meetings – a requirement of the Balanced Score Card planning process.
Additional Services: Support for parents attending these meetings through 1-time training for parent leaders to better understand school data, budgets, and more effectively participate in activities to plan the following year’s Balanced Score Card. To ensure Latino parents engage in the School Planning Summit, PPP staff is also able to coach parents prior to the planning process and accompany parents at meetings, if necessary, to ensure meaningful engagement.
Over the course of our last six years of family engagement work in SFUSD schools Mission Graduates has developed valuable base of resources and best practices on engaging, educating and empowering Latino families to become more effective partners with schools for the academic success of their children. Mission Graduates is available to share this expertise and help community members and staff within the community at large at a school (parents, CBO partners or school staff) to build capacity to work with Latino, Spanish-speaking families. The scope of this work can be flexible and tailored directly to the needs of each individual school community.
