Last spring, Rocketship Public Schools, a national network of charter schools, and staff from City Forward Collective, a Milwaukee organization focused on eliminating educational inequity, brought together 30 parents from public, private and charter schools to co-host a virtual mayoral forum ahead of a special election. More than 1,000 families attended the event to learn about the candidates and their position on topics, including education.
As this event shows, parents are extremely interested in shaping the educational experiences of their children and those in their communities. The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the role of parents in their children’s learning and challenged the traditional model of how educators and families interact. It was a shift no one was prepared for, yet a late 2021 Learning Heroes report found that over 90% of parents surveyed planned to be as or more involved in their children’s education than during the 2020-21 school year, when the effects of the pandemic on at-home learning were still being felt deeply.
