Innovate is using our peer-to-peer model to organize and amplify parent power in Half Moon Bay and Pescadero with two local organizations, Coastside Hope and PUENTE, where parent leaders train other parent leaders. Over the past six months, we went from partnering to provide training to a small group of 15 families focused on reclassification for English Learners to building a consistent base of 45 parent leaders who are learning how to organize other families to improve educational outcomes across their communities.
The families from Coastside Hope and PUENTE, many of whom are farmworkers and parents of English learners and students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), attended our workshops to:
- Know their rights in the IEP process. For families of students with learning differences, the IEP is one of the most important documents in their child’s educational journey. Parents learned how to use Innovate’s newly developed, free AIEP (a-iep.org) platform. This platform summarizes and simplifies IEP documents, then translates the summaries so parents can better prepare for and meaningfully participate in the IEP process.
- Become powerful advocates by learning how to use data. Families learned about publicly available student outcome data in Cabrillo Unified School District, including academic disparities affecting Latino students. Parents also learned how to access and interpret public data through tools like the California School Dashboard. This session also sparked parent leaders to brainstorm early organizing campaign ideas, including a potential high-impact tutoring pilot to address low literacy rates and limited local resources.
- Navigate local education as parents of English learners. This included learning about the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC), reclassification criteria, and ways to support language development at home.
- Learn about college readiness and A-G requirements to ensure their children stay on track. In this session, families also explored how high-impact tutoring can be an additional resource.
Each workshop Innovate leads connects to a core element of our mission: families are equipped to advocate for high-quality education, understand how to access and interpret publicly available data, learn their rights as parents of students with IEPs and/or multilingual learners, and turn their knowledge and growing relationships with one another into collective action. By strengthening their advocacy skills, this newly formed Coastside parent leadership team (PLT) is building the capacity to effect change around the emerging campaign priorities they’ve identified, including literacy, English learner support, and access to special education resources.
This is where peer-to-peer organizing matters. One trained parent leader can reach and activate many families through relationships at school, in their neighborhoods, and across their community. This multiplier effect allows parent leadership to grow beyond a single leader, workshop, or meeting.
As parent leadership grows, families are preparing to bring their experiences and priorities directly to district decision-makers. Parents have planned a research meeting with Superintendent Dr. Ramón Miramontes from the Cabrillo Unified School District. This meeting will focus on improving literacy outcomes for Latino students.
Coastside parents are learning together, building relationships, and preparing to shape the policies and practices that impact access to a high-quality educational experience.