Clients or Partners: Engaging Families in Baltimore's Community Schools

• In Event: Taking Collective Action and Responsibility to Address Inequity: The Case of Partnerships for Community Schools

Abstract

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. 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). To understand the status of the family and community engagement in Baltimore’s community schools, this paper draws on a study of over 600 parent interviews conducted by a local advocacy organization, Teachers Democracy Project, as well as public documents and interviews with key community school leaders in Baltimore.

Using Ann Ishimaru’s equitable collaboration framework, the findings show that while there is a strong foundation of community schools in Baltimore, families are often treated as clients rather than equal partners in the schools. Keeping families in the position of clients in Baltimore, 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 community schools take a community organizing approach to family engagement, rather than just acting as a hub for services for families.

Author

• Jessica Shiller, Towson University