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Description
This study focuses on a narrative of a local school board's interactions with a specific group of parents and an issue put before the board by the school district administration that impacted the advocacy and action of parents on behalf of their preschool age children. The guiding research question of the study is: How did participation in a parent group that influenced a school board decision impact the individual parent's subsequent school and community involvement? Seven parents of preschool age children who were involved in the school board decision participated in this study. The group includes this researcher who had a child enrolled in the Families Learning Together program during the 2003-04 school year. A review of the literature regarding the importance of parent involvement and the application of Joyce Epstein's (Epstein, 1995) overlapping spheres of influence is examined. Whereas the theory of overlapping spheres of influence takes the position that when home, school, and community share responsibilities the educational process is enhanced, this study examines what can happen when the spheres of influence do not align. The findings of the study are exploratory in nature using naturalistic or qualitative methods based upon: participant observation, semi-structured interviewing, action research, historical research, and non-statistical methods of analysis and report. The documentation of one critical event, parents engaging the school board not to relocate their preschool program, led to the identification of six factors that enabled the parent group to exert their power, namely: networking, connectedness, synergistic collaboration, interpersonal positive climate, resiliency, and voice. This research contributes to the understanding of how parents working outside of the school setting and without school support can influence school board decisions and how participation in such an action research based process subsequently impacted their level of school and community involvement. This study contributes to the understanding of how a critical event and interactions between parents and school board hinders or promotes parent school engagement, as well as enabling members of other similar parent or community groups to understand possible ways of solving policy issues and or parent-school practices in their own groups and communities.
