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Bridging the Gap / Liaison connects school, families for success
By Brooke NelsonOGDEN -- If they do it right, they could work themselves right out of a job.
Connecting families and schools for student success, family-school liaisons in the Ogden City School District are striving for more parental involvement.
"The main reason we're here is to let parents know how important they are," said liaison Juan Miranda. "It's weird to say, but hopefully one day we won't be needed."
Often children are subjected to circumstances totally beyond their control that have major effects on school performance, the liaisons say.
"We help take care of basic needs -- food, clothes, rent. We don't provide those things but we connect them to the agencies who can help them," said Luci Montano. "We help them ask questions they don't even know how to ask."
The group works with hundreds of families based on referrals from concerned principals or counselors who recognize there could be a deeper problem behind a student's decline in progress.
The liaisons are all bilingual, fluent in both Spanish and English, but the group encounters a variety of languages as they work with children attending schools across the district.
They've met parents whose first languages are Farsi, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Russian, among others.
By immediately connecting parents who are new not only to the school district, but to the state or country, with local agencies, children's needs are met more quickly and students are more likely to end up registered for school and staying there.
"In many countries, education is not a necessity," Miranda said. "It's food first. They don't value school as much as bringing a meal into the home."
By helping families get the food and nutrition they need, students can be at school instead of helping their parents make ends meet.
"With migrant families, often kids are helping put of food on the table. Every little bit counts," Montano said. "People don't realize how many programs are available."
But a major move is not the only event that can cause a student to have a drop in performance.
Families who have lived in the area their whole lives can experience temporary unemployment, divorce, illness or death impacting a student's ability to attend or succeed in school.
"We don't want to enable them ... We just show them other avenues to be self-sufficient," Montano said.
Every situation is different, but liaisons work with families for only a short time helping them get the information they need from teachers, counselors and community agencies so students can succeed in school. Liaisons might take parents to fill out job applications, find health insurance or connect them with agencies that provide food and education about nutrition.
"Our goal is to get kids to school, to pass tests, to go to college, to be successful," Miranda said.
The team is under the direction of the Alternative Language Services program and is heavily supported by federal grants.
All along the way, parents are key to the process.
"We set goals with the parents. Every child's different," said liaison Paul Clifton.
"They were happy to know there was someone to give them the boost they needed," Clifton said of one family.
"We're the bridge," Montano said.
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