Parents, school officials, and True North organizers met at the Wild Rivers Community Foundation building on June 23 for their inaugural Parent Engagement Team meeting, after making an agreement during the Action on Education that was held in May. Five parents and four our out of the five selected school representatives attended. The focus of these meetings is to create and propose a strategy to increase communication between families and schools.

Josh Norris, parent of four and True North community organizer, briefly described the event during an interview on June 30. He stated that after they shared their experiences with working parent-school communication, the group identified three major values that they will utilize when crafting an engagement strategy. First is teamwork because, as Norris stated, “it’s not going to work unless we have teachers, administrators, and families working together.” Next is the idea that school should be a community hub. The third value is to create a partnership “between schools, tribes, other community resources and organizations.” The group also came to the decision that they should expand their outreach beyond just parents, and focus on communicating with families.

The rest of the meeting was spent developing a timeline. Their goal is to propose their findings to the school board in November and begin implementation in Spring 2016. Margaret Keating Elementary, Smith River Elementary, and (possibly) Crescent Elk Middle School were selected as pilot candidates for implementation. According to Norris, “the reason we’re looking at those schools is because some of the outlying schools like Margaret Keating are the lowest performing schools. They have the highest amount of need.”

The strategy will encompass all aspects of scholastic life, from advanced policy reform to simple changes like, for example, having a fun picnic with barbecue instead of an average back-to-school night. Parents will be able to sit down with teachers as equals.

Norris stated that this inaugural meeting “was a powerful experience because a lot of these folks, you could tell, have not sat down in a room all together. I think that was pretty groundbreaking. What we discovered, of course, is that we have a lot more in common than we thought.” He said that the event “went the way that it should have been. You have these different interests coming together for the same purpose.”

He finishes by stating, “Del Norte schools are about to turn it around. I think that some things have happened in the recent year that haven’t happened for many years before. I think people are now finally ready. They just need some encouragement from the outside, and that’s where we come in.”

The next Parent Engagement Team meeting will be held on July 14 at 6:00 p.m. Parents and family members are encouraged to contact Josh Norris at (707) 954-7226 about involvement.