How to Improve Family Engagement with Your School

What is family engagement?

In a previous post, we discussed parent and family engagement. Family engagement is a collaborative approach to a child’s learning and well-being. It’s when families, schools, teachers, counselors, therapists, administrators, and children work together to support a child’s education and development. Family engagement is based on shared responsibility and mutual respect.

What are barriers to family engagement with schools and their school district?

In an ideal world, everybody would be actively participating in their children’s education, on board with the school’s philosophies, vision, and mission. Unfortunately, there is a lot of finger-pointing and blame-placing when it comes to the lack of family engagement. Some of these might sound familiar:

• The parents won’t show up to the workshop, so why bother?
• I sent the families an email notification. They just don’t respond.
• It’s just one meeting a year, how hard can it be to show up?

These frustrations point to deeper, underlying conditions that might be stopping families from showing up and participating. In our work with families and schools, we have identified three overarching barriers that families face.

1. Personal and Social Barriers: Many families face circumstances that make engagement harder than it looks from the outside. Financial strain, long or irregular work hours, and the challenge of coordinating childcare can push school events to the bottom of the priority list. Some parents carry negative memories of their own schooling or feel insecure because of differences in educational background, which can make school spaces feel intimidating rather than welcoming.
2. Communication and School-Related Barriers: Not every family has reliable email, WiFi, or even a consistent phone number. When communication depends on a single channel—or when messages are unclear, infrequent, or not followed up—parents fall through the cracks. Families often aren’t sure whom to contact at school or how. Language access is another major barrier; without translation or interpretation, families from different countries may feel shut out, even when they want to participate.
3. Logistical and Environmental Barriers: Practical challenges also play a huge role. Many communities lack dependable public transportation, making it difficult for parents to attend meetings or events. If getting to school requires multiple transfers, or if walking routes feel unsafe after dark, attendance drops sharply—no matter how motivated families may be.

When we stop placing blame and begin to find solutions to meet our students’ families where they are, we build healthier learning communities for our students.

Tips to Improve Family Engagement in Your School:

Administer a Family and Parent Engagement Survey: 

This is the best way to identify key attitudes families have regarding their child’s learning, learning environment, well-being, school safety, bullying, and community. Data-driven actions will always be more effective, saving your school money and time. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what it is.

Improve Your Communication Strategy:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.  ~ George Bernard Shaw

Use newsletters, bulletins, emails, and online forums. Try phone calls and texts. Identify who uses what kind of communication channel and adapt your school communication strategy to include that. Translate the materials into your families’ languages.

Vary Engagement Options and “Degrees of Engagement”: 

Some families would love to attend meetings and participate in school events, but they simply can’t. Identify barriers to their involvement and make adjustments. This might include providing opportunities to get involved online, on the weekends, early morning, or evening hours. It might include having translators or simultaneous translation options through AI technology. Find ways to connect to your community. Meet them where they are. Provide them with bite-sized and big-gulp participation opportunities.

Provide Resources and Support:

Parents, grandparents, and guardians are overwhelmed. Providing workshops and resources about how they can best support their child’s learning and development can make a big impact. Popular needs and topics might include:

• Social media and cyberbullying
• Digital safety (including video games, social media, and screentime)
• Improving literacy skills
• Interpreting progress and school report card data
• Preparing for SATs and state exams
• Soft skills development

You can develop workshops, create downloadable PDFs, pamphlets, and offer zoom meetings to suit your community’s unique needs. Likewise, your families are your school’s greatest resource. Identify experts on everything from personal finance to car repairs, hair care for single dads, to storytellers. Involve your families in building a healthier school community.

Family engagement boils down to parents and schools communicating with each other, sharing info, teaming up on goals, and building a community around kids’ learning and development. It’s not “more events to attend” or “sign this form.” It’s about a real relationship where parents’ voices matter, and schools make it easy for families to understand what’s happening, ask questions, and participate in decisions that affect their children.

When that partnership clicks, kids usually show up more, try harder, and feel like school is a place where they belong. Family engagement can also increase teacher engagement.

More on that later!