More districts are recognizing the value of family and community engagement as a strategy to meet various goals, be it improved academic outcomes or the social-emotional well-being of students.
But not enough training and understanding exists around what this work truly entails, said Miranda Scully, the director of family and community engagement for the Fayette County school district in Lexington, Ky., and a 2025 EdWeek Leaders To Learn From honoree.
It鈥檚 why Scully and her team have led trainings across the school district to ensure all educators and staff understand and follow best practices when interacting with families, have started programs such as a Latino family literacy curriculum to help families cultivate reading at home, and more.
Scully spoke with Education Week about some fundamental aspects of effective family and community engagement. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How do you define effective family and community engagement?
We understand that effective family engagement means that we know that our students don鈥檛 live in silos. We know that our schools are not off on an island by themselves. So we鈥檙e very much interconnected with our community and with our families.
Effective family engagement has family learning and support. It has staff learning support, where we are building [the] capacity of our staff, we鈥檙e building [the] capacity of our families to understand what family engagement is, and then we are doing community outreach and engagement, which means that we are not neglecting the role of our community in supporting our students, our families, and our schools.
What role do teachers and school staff play in family and community engagement?
What we know about family engagement is that even though it鈥檚 on the rise, most of our educators, some of our staff, never had to do anything around family engagement. You think of teachers going through training and getting the knowledge around [multi-tiered system of supports], instructional practices, all these things. What about family engagement? So then we鈥檙e put in a setting where we鈥檙e working with students, but we also realize now how important it is to engage with families. And there鈥檚 no roadmap for it, because we haven鈥檛 talked about it. We haven鈥檛 trained for it.
It鈥檚 hard for me to define the role of a teacher, school staff, because it鈥檚 adaptable to meet the needs of their students and their families. But they can only fulfill that role if they feel supported with professional learning, with having the confidence around family engagement, having ownership over family engagement within their classroom, within their school. From a district perspective, that is very important that we create more systems and support around family engagement so our schools can better navigate it and what it means for their particular population at their school.
How do district leaders and administrators cultivate relationships for engagement?
I鈥檝e been very fortunate to be in this school district where I鈥檝e not had to battle a superintendent around the importance of family engagement. I think that鈥檚 the first thing. To be the leader of a district, to verbally say it, and then to act as if families are partners and that they have value within the school system. And then hiring the right people to be able to facilitate that type of vision. I mean people [who] are willing to train, willing to learn, willing to adapt, and that can bring a diverse way of understanding and engaging families.
District staff, we have to maintain our touch with our community, and so one thing that is very big with us at our office is that anytime there鈥檚 community outreach events, we鈥檙e not just asking schools to go. Our district staff is out there. We show up. We鈥檙e working at a table. We鈥檙e volunteering at events. We volunteer in our schools. We have to humanize our district staff so people can see who we are, that we鈥檙e people, we鈥檙e parents too. We鈥檙e community members, supporting students.
Where should ideas for engagement programming or events come from?
The need for programming, for services, has to come from our families, our students, our community members. When we look at attendance, a lot of people get bummed out about how many people show up to events or programs, and the one thing that we try to do internally when we鈥檙e looking at that is being reflective of our practices. Are we doing the same thing we did 10 years ago, just because we鈥檝e always done it? If so, chances are, we finally need to stop.
We should be listening about what some of the needs are, even how we plan it out should still have input from families. We always say that we want to do things with families, not to them.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face?
We want to make sure that our schools and our staff don鈥檛 feel as if we鈥檙e asking them to redo things. We want to honor and recognize the things that our schools are doing, our teachers are doing that are successful, but also that there鈥檚 room for growth. Some of the challenges that we face are the lack of preparation for staff around family engagement, the lack of ongoing professional learning around family engagement. Building confidence and self efficacy around that is very important.
