Immigrant Parents' Participation in Local School District Implementation of California's Local Control and Accountability Plan

• In Event: Bridging Multiple Worlds: Innovative Partnerships to Educate Diverse Democracies Within Culturally and Socioeconomically Diverse Communities

Abstract

Objective
This study examines how 21 Latino immigrant parents in the Padres Líderes (Parent Leaders) community program collectively negotiated, developed, and presented letters to their local school board on a funding priority in response to California’s school districts’ new Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP). Using an ethnographic approach, we present a thematic analysis of key arguments negotiated for inclusion in letters by two parent groups, one focusing on school safety and the second, on summer educational programs. Facilitators were parent leaders who had previously participated in the Padres Líderes program.

This study addresses two research questions:
1) How did parents interact in accomplishing their institutional goals through collaborative means?
2) How did parents negotiate and develop letters to their local school board on a funding priority that was responsive to their school district’s LCAP planning process?

Theoretical Framework
This study draws from Barton et al. (2004) Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) Framework, which postulates that parents serve as mediators who can frame, author, and position themselves within school ecologies and thus are capable of advocating for their children’s education. The study also drew on Cooper’s (2011) Bridging Multiple Worlds Theory to complement the EPE framework by examining parents’ navigating across their multiple cultural worlds of families, schools, and policy, and examined how Latino parents served as cultural brokers by collectively engaging school ecologies in to advocate for their children’s education.

Methods
Participant observers wrote field notes, gathered artifacts (worksheets, drafts of letters, and final letters), and collected video and audio recordings of classroom and group interactions. Data collection extended for a period of four months. Video and audio data were transcribed utilizing the Transana qualitative software program. The evolution of the parents’ letters was member-checked by the parent leaders and research assistants.

Results
Data analysis revealed ways that group facilitators helped organize the two groups. With regard to the first research question, key themes in the topics of the two groups’ letters are presented, with analysis of how topics were negotiated as part of each group’s collective voice. Data suggest that parents and group facilitators drew from their shared sociocultural and linguistic understandings to negotiate, communicate, and advocate for their collective concerns.

With regard to the second research question, although the parents primarily developed the letters, group facilitators helped prepare parents to effectively present the letters at the subsequent school board meeting. The group facilitators also negotiated the content in the letters by providing up-to-date school policy information.

Significance
This study reveals how Latino immigrant parents collectively voiced, negotiated, and advocated for their educational concerns by engaging in California’s LCAP process. Through collaborative efforts and participation in a school-community partnership program, otherwise marginalized parents became collective agents of change by mediating and bridging multiple worlds to help address the schooling needs of their children (Cooper, 2011). The findings provide important evidence of an intergenerational pattern in cultural brokering and partnership, in which more experienced parent leaders empowered newcomers in advocating for their children’s educational opportunities.

Authors

• Zuleyma Nayeli Rogel, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Bertin Solis, University of California - Santa Barbara