CFEC, with the help of Dr. Julia Lopez Robertson and our partners who serve the Latino community (e.g., PASOs, SCDE Migrant Education Programs), sat down with several focus groups of Latino parents from August 2020-December 2020 to learn more about how family engagement in education looks from their perspective. A total of 22 Spanish-speaking women from the Upper Central, Midlands, and Lowcountry regions of the state participated in these conversations. These mothers, grandmothers, and other primary caretakers – who we will refer to collectively hereafter as mothers – are raising students who attend K-4 through early college level schools in South Carolina. While they share Spanish as their first language, they represent many different countries of origin including Columbia, El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, as well as the unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. 

We are grateful to these mothers for taking the time to share their experiences and observations with us. The following is a summary of what we learned.  

Key Takeaways for Districts, Schools & Family Engagement Professionals 

       1. We need a strategic, systematic, and sustained approach to providing important school information to Spanish-speaking families.  

       2.  One of the keys to engaging Latino families is to give them the sense of being invited and welcome. 

Latino children and their families continue to need targeted supports through middle and high school. Families noticed that interpreters and other resources for Spanish-speaking parents –as well as efforts to create a welcoming environment -tended to be more plentiful at the elementary school level but tapered off in middle and high school. 

Districts and schools can do more to leverage Latino families’ strengths to support improved student achievement. In listening to these mothers, we heard them describe some common strengths. One of these is the importance they place on unity and mutual support – values that form the foundation of their families. Another is the deep desire they have to see their children become independent and successful adults. 

CFEC along with Dr. Julia Lopez Robertson and our Latino family-focused community partners are in the planning stages of disseminating information from our survey widely to key stakeholders in the education community.