Success in engaging Hispanic
parents depends on creating a
school culture that welcomes all.
our Hispanic student population has
grown from 14 percent to 36 percent.
This school year, almost 65 percent of
our prekindergarten, kindergarten, and
1st grade students are English language
learners, most of them Hispanic.
Perhaps even more significant, in
addition to serving its surrounding community of landscaped townhouses and
single-family villas, Daly is the home
school to the last remaining trailer park
in Montgomery County, Maryland, an
affluent suburb northwest of Washington, D.C. More than 60 percent of
our Hispanic students live in the trailer
park, in many cases two or three families
to a trailer.
By day, the trailer park is a sylvan
mid-Atlantic version of a Central
American village, complete with
vendors of Mexican shaved ice, mangos
with chili, crisp pork chicharrones,
and spiced corn on the cob. By night,
however, it transforms into a frightening,
citylike barrio. Children come to school
with tales of sleep disrupted by gang
confrontations, police raids, family violence, and the desperation of mothers
left to fend for families after fathers have
been deported to Mexico or El Salvador.
The trailer park community brings to
Daly the same stubborn challenges
that confront many inner-city urban
schools. Building a bridge between
these children’s homes and a safe school
learning environment is essential to their
plan to address the needs of the
school’s growing Hispanic population.
The new plan incorporated many of
the approaches described in “Six Strategies for Enhancing Hispanic Parent
Involvement” on p. 67.
When we found that the Hispanic
parents felt uncomfortable attending
parent-teacher association (PTA)
meetings, we organized an outreach ini-
tiative that included monthly Hispanic
parent meetings conducted in Spanish.
At the initial meeting each September,
we ask parents what topics most interest
ensure attendance, however, is offering
free pizza, free child care, and the
opportunity for students to earn 10 Daly
Bulldog Bones, tokens that enable them
to purchase items from the school store.
At its most meaningful, parent involvement
is about creating a community of trust.
Three years ago, the Daly leadership
team revised our school improvement
them. Following their suggestions, Daly
teachers have spoken about our reading
and math instruction and state assess-
ments, our school counselor has spoken
about bullying, police officers have
addressed the issue of gang prevention,
and community leaders have discussed