Parents as Allies

In early 2021, Parents as Allies (PAA) began a journey of collaborating with school teams in a design sprint process to develop creative and innovative solutions, or “hacks” that would address the specific needs of their communities. Their initial, two-month design sprint in 2021 centred around the question: “How might we build stronger engagement between families and schools for the benefit of all students?” Almost one year later, in April 2022, PAA began a second iteration. Parents as Allies 2.0 narrowed its focus to 22 Western Pennsylvania school districts. Joined by design sprint guides, the participating school districts’ Design Teams started with empathy interviews as the main source of inspiration to co-develop the hacks aimed at increasing and strengthening family-school engagement. Following human-centred design structure, the 22 districts participating in the initiative documented their learning journeys, from their practice mini-hacks, to fall and spring hacks and onto the new future of Family School Engagement (FSE) outlined in their sustainability plans.