Legislators hear about parent-friendly approaches in Boone County Schools

Parent-friendly approaches for improving education were the subject of one of the highlight briefings in today’s meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on Education at Northern Kentucky University.

Boone County outreach pro Dr. Anna Marie Tracy discussed a number of different ways Boone County Public Schools reaches out to welcome parents to help them get more effectively involved with their children’s education.

I’ll be talking about the details of some of these plans in future posts, but one quick example is a program for parents to make the most of high school. Useful subjects discussed at this brown bag lunch affair include things parents need to know about college in general and the ACT college entrance test.

In an effort to meet the needs of parents, Boone County hosts events like these with breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings, including weekend meetings, so parents with unusual work schedules can still attend.

Boone County has figured it out – leveraging parents in positive ways is a real low-cost education option with great payback. For one thing, as a briefer pointed out, parents are available without any salary, benefits or health care costs.

Stay tuned on this, as I suspect other districts around Kentucky could benefit from some of the ideas Dr. Tracy covered today. We know that parents in other areas of Kentucky don’t always feel as welcome as what we hear is happening in Boone County.