SEAL Brief: Centering Multilingual Families in California Community Schools

RESEARCH BRIEF: Centering Multilingual Families in California Community Schools

Community schools are schools where the resources and voices of the staff, families and community are organized around supporting student success. They have shown promise in improving student learning and well-being, particularly with underserved populations such as Dual Language Learners and English Learners.

The brief by SEAL and Community Schools Learning Exchange provides useful guidance and resources for educators and administrators seeking to expand family-school partnerships as part of their community school strategy. Specifically, this brief can be used for:

• identifying areas of strength and growth for development of family-school partnerships;
• considering practices that could be implemented as part of a community school strategy (to be discussed and determined collaboratively with family leaders); and
• strengthening existing family-school partnership practices to support learning among students from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Centering Multilingual Families in California Community Schools is co-authored by Dr. Camille R. Whitney and Dr. Kendra Fehrer. Dr. Whitney is the Research & Evaluation Manager at Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL). Dr. Fehrer served as the Director of Research & Organizational Learning at the CA Community Schools Learning Exchange.