Clients or Partners: The Challenge to Engage Families in Baltimore's Community Schools

• In Event: Can Community Schools Be a Source of Democracy and Liberation? Critical Perspectives From Four Cities

Abstract

Objective
This paper argues that as community schools grow as a model across the country, it needs to be interrogated in order to address the power imbalances that exist between non-dominant families and schools. Community schools need to be accountable to the families and communities that they serve in order to have more authentic and equitable family engagement.
Theoretical framework
Researchers have shown how traditional forms of parent engagement disproportionately benefit middle class families (Horvat, Weininger, & Lareau, 2003; Lareau, 2003; Ishimaru, 2019a; Ishimaru, 2019b). Community schools are innovative but still rely on traditional forms of family engagement like the curriculum nights and parent-teacher associations (PTAs). Drawn from critical race theory, community organizing literature, as well as sociocultural learning theories, the paper uses the idea of “equitable collaboration” as a framework to understand family engagement, ensuring that the school is not the center of family engagement and approaching the work bi-directionally, and also builds power through strategies that engage families as a collective, (Ishimaru 2019a, 355-6).
Methods and data sources
To understand the status of the family and community engagement in Baltimore’s community schools, this paper draws on a study of over 600 semi-structured parent interviews conducted by a local advocacy organization, Teachers Democracy Project. The interviews were with families connected with community schools as well as traditional schools, and asked to what degree families felt engaged with their children’s school. We also reviewed public documents from school board meetings on community schools, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted with key community school leaders in Baltimore.
Findings and significance
The findings show that family engagement in community schools is not much different than that in traditional schools. While there is a strong foundation of community schools in Baltimore, in them, families are often treated as clients rather than equal partners in the schools. Keeping families in the position of clients in Baltimore, where the community school provides services to them, maintains an existing racialized power imbalance that has been in place throughout the city’s history, (Baum, 2010; King, Drabinski, & Davis, 2018; Pietila, 2010). Equally problematic is that the client approach reifies deficit perspectives, leading school staff to see low income families of color as needy and unable, rather than full of capacity and potential, which also has been characteristic of how African-American families have been treated by urban schools writ large, (Lomotney & Milner, 2014; deRoykins & Madkins, 2019). Consequently, the paper argues that for community schools to move toward a more equitable collaboration with families, they should take a community organizing approach to family engagement, rather than just acting as a hub for services for families.

Author

• Jessica Shiller, Towson University