Excerpted from The Head's Handbook
One of our parents once told me that our school was a good place for his child when everything went well, but it was a GREAT place when his child hit a speed bump or experienced a setback! I was enormously pleased that this parent felt that was true of our school, and it has proved over the years to be an important goal to sustain. However, things don’t always go well year after year for the kids we serve. It is in those times that a school is severely tested. We need to operate on the assumption that for every good day we are having with a student or a family, we are making a “deposit” into an account of goodwill and trust, but we also have to remember that parents may need to make a withdrawal from that balance of goodwill from time to time.
There are so many ways in which our relationships with parents can go off the tracks. Most often, parents become anxious, worried, fractious, or demanding when their children are having difficulty in school. The age of the student makes no difference, nor does it seem to matter whether the difficulty is academic, physical, emotional, or social. Parents want their children to do well in school. In all ways and at all times, parents deserve to feel that the school is making good faith efforts to operate in the best interest of their children. When a parent starts to feel that this trust is misplaced, that the school has not been as honest, candid, or helpful as it should, then the relationship between school and parent is likely to become strained or even damaged.
Having clear policies for communications, interactions, conferences, grades, administrative contact, and parent behavior is essential to maintaining good relationships with parents. Schools are moving toward publishing clear and explicit student and parent handbooks, contracts, and covenants for behavioral expectations. Just as we have clear ideas for employee and student conduct, so should we have them for parent conduct. Parents may have no idea that they have stepped over the line if no one ever pointed out where the line was!
When concerns surface, do we have clear expectations about the expected protocols and sequence for parental interactions with the school? Are parents expected to go to the teacher first with their concern? Is there a system of deans or advisors that parents are expected to contact before coming to see the head? Do administrators check with parents to make sure they have followed those protocols before scheduling a conference and helping them bypass a well-known series of first steps? How can we build trust with our faculty and staff if not by sharing with them information we are hearing from parents and by having clear and candid conversations about the next course of action?
In today’s educational climate, stifling the voices of parents is not only unwise, it is impractical. We hear increasingly in the public sector that parents are asking for and being given greater and greater authority and responsibility for decision-making in schools, particularly those schools in crisis. Having wise, trusting, well-educated parents increases our chances that when a problem arises, we can expect to have open and constructive conversations about solutions, alternatives, and possibilities. It is in situations where we can meet as adults to calmly explore possibilities that some of the most appropriate interventions, solutions, compromises, and opportunities emerge for our students and our schools. Clear channels of communication are the building blocks for creating communities of trust and transparency in our schools.
Parent surveys and questionnaires, focus and discussion groups, an annual State of the School meeting, and well-prepared and regularly scheduled parent conferences and grade reports are useful vehicles in understanding how parents’ perceptions are shaped and where you need to put your school’s communication resources and energy.
The Joys and Triumphs of Working with Parents
Even though the primary mission of our schools is educating our students, good schools understand that the effectiveness of our institutions can also be measured in the satisfaction of parents. Parents today are more insecure and uncertain about their children’s futures. In the face of rising financial crises, increasing unemployment and workforce globalization, overburdened and challenged public school systems, and uncertain standards, they look at our schools, our curriculum, and our programs and are often astounded at how quickly the educational landscape has changed and how different their own education was from what their children experience. We cannot take their support, patronage, or continued retention for granted.
Helping parents understand and appreciate the work we do and, in turn, realize how important they are in the educational outcomes and objectives we strive for is essential to the building of effective and excellent schools. The opportunity to work with parents who are appreciated and appreciative in return is rewarding for all of us who work in schools. To see parents graduate with their children and return to our institutions to apply for their grandchildren is paramount to the furtherance of our mission. Working collaboratively and cooperatively with parents should be one of the goals for school sustainability now and in the future, for it is those parents who value our education and our programs who will support our schools with their time, their energy, their talent, and their personal resources today and tomorrow.
Reveta Bowers is a former head of school at the Center for Early Education (California).