“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. 
The University of North Texas’ GEAR UP program employs two full-time staff to serve as community liaisons at the participating middle and high schools. According to program director Aurelio Hurtado de Mendoza, the one-on-one attention that the liaisons provide parents “makes all the difference in the world.” Another key is the liaisons’ ability to speak both Spanish and English and to understand the world in which parents live. Liaisons work especially hard, Hurtado de Mendoza says, to overcome parents’ distrust of the school, which they initially see as an arm of the federal government. The fruits of the liaison’s labors are evident as parents often call or drop by the liaison’s school-based office to discuss concerns pertaining to their children.
When it becomes clear to the liaison that, despite the program’s efforts, parents and children are not communicating openly about school-related issues, she has the discretion to call a meeting between a parent and a student. During one of these meetings, a mother was shocked to learn that her daughter had been cutting class to spend time with friends. After the truth came out, the liaison helped develop a plan to get the student back on track academically. It’s not uncommon for liaisons to conduct up to five of these meetings per day. Though time consuming, the meetings reinforce the connections between home and school in important ways. “The kids know that the parents and the liaison are a team, so they stop messing up,” explains Hurtado de Mendoza. “And the parents can see that the liaisons are there for the well-being of the child.”
The parent outreach coordinator employed by the ENLACE y Avance program of Santa Barbara, California boasts a unique—and desirable—set of qualifications. In addition to being bilingual, she is a credentialed guidance counselor who has also served as a middle school registrar. According to program director Claudia Martinez, the coordinator’s deep knowledge of the school system has endeared her to both the families and the personnel at the school that serves a cohort of 35 ENLACE students. As an adjunct member of the counseling staff, the coordinator is on site once a week, offering individual advising as well as facilitating group counseling sessions for students who are struggling. During her days off site, her work focuses on connecting families to the support system offered by ENLACE and alerting them to important happenings at the school.
Similar to the ENLACE y Avance program, the I Have a Dream Foundation (IHAD) of Boulder County, Colorado, works with cohorts of approximately 50 students, or Dreamers, beginning in elementary school and continuing through high school graduation. Each cohort is assigned a full-time project coordinator, whose job is to establish long-term, personalized relationships with the Dreamers and their families. The coordinators also build a strong relationship with the personnel at the Dreamers’ schools, and serve as a resource for both students and teachers. Knowing that many Latino families feel reluctant to approach teachers by themselves, coordinators try to scaffold the contact between parents and schools. For example, to encourage attendance at parent-teacher conferences, the coordinators accompany parents during the meeting and provide translation assistance for both parents and teachers.