“You look at children who are successful in school, and you see parents that are involved.” Until PALMS, there was very little Latino parent involvement. 
In 2003, as New York City began an intensive restructuring of its high schools, a group of parents in the Bronx realized they and their neighbors lacked clear and up-to-date information about how to take advantage of the new educational options that were suddenly available to their middle-school children. In response to this need, staff from the Bronx Institute convened a group of parents who had successfully navigated their children’s transition from middle to high school, and began developing what would come to be known as Family-to-Family: The Guide to the Schools of Hope. The guide, aimed at families whose children are eligible to attend the 85 new small high schools in the Bronx, is the result of an action research project conducted by staff from the Bronx Institute in collaboration with a steering committee made up of ten parents with children in the Bronx GEAR UP and ENLACE programs.
Parents worked with program staff on researching the content of the guide and making decisions about its organization and design. The guide features an overview of the city’s high school admissions process, the research team’s findings about what Bronx families want in a high school, and information about the new high schools—all presented in a family-friendly and engaging format. Once the guide is published, the parents will facilitate meetings to introduce the guide to other Bronx families. Meetings will be held in middle schools, community centers, and in the parents’ own living rooms. “Our goal is to introduce the concept of choice to our Bronx families, many of whom have no idea what that’s all about,” explains Naomi Barber, a leader at the Bronx Institute. “We want them to exercise their choosing muscles now,” so they’ll be ready to use them again when the kids get to college, says Barber.
Parents in Costa Mesa, California, also came together to respond to their community’s need for more information about their children’s educational options. To complement an existing college awareness conference aimed at Costa Mesa’s Latino youth, a consortium of community organizations launched an annual Parent Education Summit in 2002. According to Victor Becerra, director of the ALMA Program at the University of California, Irvine, the impetus for the summit came directly from the parents. “They said, ‘these issues that you’re talking about in the youth conference are great, but if you want parents to invest in what you’re doing with the youth, you’ve got to create an activity that speaks directly to our needs as parents,’” Becerra recalls.
Fostering parent ownership is also a key strategy of Chicago’s Hispanic Math and Science Education Initiative (HMSEI), a program run out of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) that seeks to increase the number of Latino students entering health professions. Parents with children in HMSEI automatically become part of the program’s Parent Network, which meets monthly during the school year and is entirely run by parent volunteers. As an incorporated non-profit organization, the group has an executive board that includes parents and program staff. It also has a number of committees that implement key functions of the program, such as scholarship drives, parent hospitality, and choosing speakers who can address parents’ pressing concerns.