Community-based engagement and recruitment – door-to-door and community (churches, shopping centers) canvassing in targeted neighborhoods to engage and recruit parents in independent setting and manner that reaches parents who do not frequent school campuses
Community-based human rights documentation – organizers and trained parents going door-to-door to survey and conduct in-depth interviews regarding experiences with parent participation and school discipline
House meetings – targeted meetings after relationships are built with parents who live near each other and share CADRE’s vision for more in-depth discussion and sharing of stories
Coalition Building
Effective movement-driven coalitions — bringing organizational allies together, or acting as a committed ally around long-term solidarity, political vision and purpose, and shared analysis; providing co-founding strategic thought leadership and facilitation so that these coalitions are built with values and principles that elevate the voices, leadership, and power of those most impacted by the issues our movement is addressing at any given moment in time.
These include:
Dignity in Schools Campaign – Los Angeles Chapter (co-founder)
Leadership Development
Empowerment Academy — year-round monthly self-empowerment trainings for new members and core leaders to hone their personal practices of goal-setting, leadership, relationship-building with their children, and educational advocacy, aligned with the academic calendar
Membership development meetings – holding Parent Action Meetings every 4-6 weeks to provide information, generate parent feedback, activate parents in events, and build relationships with one another; providing members with critical services as needed
Core leadership groups – implementing parents as organizational and campaign-specific decision-makers through regular meetings that entail political education, strategic planning, and consensus-building
New knowledge through participatory action research – transcribing community-based documentation and community based data analysis into call to action reports/policy demands with parent voices
Parent-centered organization – engaging members and core leaders in the development of organizational values and principles in order to build a parent-led, union-like entity that can alter the balance of power between South LA schools and parents long-term
Policy Change
Parent-led policy solutions – drawing analysis of problem and ideal solutions from parents, engaging feedback on solutions, and identifying policies versus practices, identifying responsible parties, and developing demands (action committees, leadership groups)
Engagement of public officials – engaging school, District, or State-level officials as needed in order to share community-based research, policy solutions, and demands
Monitoring policies and practices – training core leaders and new members to monitor, share results, and assess accountability gaps
Campaigns & Movement Building
Human Right to Education Campaign — long-term, systemic campaign with multiple phases that chip away at structural racism in public education, namely through disruption of the school-to-prison pipeline and student pushout through harsh discipline and criminalizing school climates
Parent Monitoring Team — campaign leadership team on which parents make decisions, conduct monitoring, learn and carry out strategies for holding systems accountable, do participatory action research, and engage decision-makers; involves core leaders as well as member leaders
Increased political will — building effective movement-driven coalitions (see below); through the framing and messaging in our publications, electronic and social media communications, annual fundraiser, and convenings, changing and developing new bottom-up, community-led narratives about parent participation in schools; staff and parent leaders serving on committees/task forces with systems leaders open to negotiating bottom-up community-led change; and special projects that help us redefine and redesign power relations between Black and Brown parents and schools, all with the express purpose of:
disrupting, interrupting, and humanizing the broader public’s perceptions of Black and Brown parents, racial disparities in public education, systemic anti-Black racism, “safe schools”, and school climate
Community Resiliency
Deepening parents’ understanding of mind and body wellness as a practice for building resilience in response to community violence
Building awareness about the intersections between community violence, school climate, and other environmental stressors and their impact on parent and student engagement in schools
Providing parents with a structured way of accessing peer support to help work through challenging personal and social conditions.
