This resource highlights how the importance of centering the experiences and perspectives of all educational stakeholders, especially students and families, is essential for cultivating an effective and cohesive school climate. This resource provides valuable perspectives from high school students and recent graduates on how sharing and centering their experiences is fundamentally important to the overall climate of the school. Educational leaders, including school site administrators, district administrators, and other staff dedicated to improving school climate, can select, adapt, and implement the ideas in this resource to strengthen their efforts in building connections and gathering insights from those they aim to serve.

Improving family engagement is key to school transformations that address the whole child, the whole family, and the whole community. When parents and teachers work together to form partnerships where diversity is identified and cultural values and beliefs are recognized, all students thrive. 

This brief presents evidence-based key insights for family-facing practitioners to support and cultivate high-quality, equitable family engagement through culturally responsive practices. It asks: What are some ways educators can build partnerships with families that invite knowledge-sharing and collaboration? How might families and school-based educators learn from each other? What actions can be taken together?  

Family Engagement: Authentically Integrating Essential Competencies, provides family-facing practitioners with a unifying set of tools, strategies, and dispositions that help them to engage in deep, reflective conversations with each other and the families they serve.  

Efforts to improve school climate can face resistance from school staff. Leaders who recognize resistance as a natural phenomenon and who understand its root causes are better prepared to successfully manage change initiatives.

This guide, examines some common root causes of staff resistance, such as burnout, a lack of trust, and fear. It offers actionable strategies for leaders to mitigate the effects of resistance by encouraging them to recognize such resistance as a source of vital information that productively illuminates important gaps or opportunities in initiative implementation. By reframing their approach as one of openness and curiosity, leaders can create favorable conditions for school staff to support the school climate initiative. Questions throughout the guide provide opportunities for leaders to reflect on the best staff engagement approaches.

Schools collect vast amounts of data about students—the sources range from attendance records, classroom activities, and standardized assessment scores to homework completion, behavior, and local school climate surveys. School leaders and educators are becoming increasingly skilled in sharing and using data to make important decisions about programs, interventions, resources, and policies.

This document describes strategies for sharing data and engaging in data-driven discussions with families to improve student and school outcomes. It includes tips for considering how to invite families into data conversations, effectively engaging with families around student and school data, and determining which data to share with families. A vignette from Azusa Unified School District in California illustrates how collaborating with families to make data-informed decisions can build trust and draw on community assets to improve school outcomes.