This group of Sacramento moms means business. Here’s how they advocate for their kids, schools

The oldest of six siblings, Martha Pulido was raised by two primarily Spanish-speaking parents who immigrated from Mexico. Despite their efforts to support their children’s education, navigating the system proved challenging due to the language barrier.

Pulido, a bilingual mother of a fourth and first grader, hoped that would never happen to her. But two years ago when she committed to become more involved in her two children’s education, the Sacramento mother didn’t know where to start.

Pulido’s involvement up until that point was limited to customary back-to-school nights and open house meetings with teachers. She yearned to learn about school site councils, English learner advisory committees and parent teacher organizations.

“I didn’t know anything about these things because it’s not something our parents who don’t speak English get involved in,” Pulido said.

Fast forward two years and Pulido is a leader in a group of Latina, mostly monolingual mothers, advocating to improve student achievement across the Sacramento City Unified School District. The group, named the comité de padres, or parents committee, came together through a statewide grant that intends to create “community schools.” The education model, which garnered renewed attention and support during the COVID-19 pandemic, addresses an array of student and family needs.

Community schools provide a range of on-campus assistance, including health and mental health support, tutoring and other social services. Teachers are encouraged to increase the cultural relevance of their classes and foster a sense of belonging among students. And parents have a more significant role in the decision-making process.

But parental engagement is a particularly difficult part of the equation for communities of color, said Lucero Soto, a community organizer for Sacramento Area Congregations Together, the faith-based organization that facilitated parent outreach for a community schools-focused statewide grant. These families are neglected in education by systemic barriers, like language access and poverty, Soto added.

“They (families) don’t really know their role or power,” Soto said.

That’s why Pulido and the other Spanish-speaking mothers are looking to create change.

While snacking on pan dulce and coffee, they discuss ongoing issues in their children’s schools and the best way to address them. The monthly meetings hosted by Sacramento ACT offer an opportunity for parents to vent, provide advice to each other and, ultimately, empower themselves to become leaders in education.

“We just created a safe space for them,” Soto said. “And I think that’s what is lacking in our schools.”

Expanding community schools in Sacramento

Sacramento ACT and mothers, like Pulido, are part of a $4.1 billion statewide effort to expand community schools. Research from the Learning Policy Institute, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit, shows community schools help increase student attendance, behavior and academic achievement.

There are roughly 5,000 such schools across the country, according to the national Coalition for Community Schools. Notable examples include community schools in East Oakland and East Los Angeles, areas predominately made up of poor Black and Latino neighborhoods.

California lawmakers hoping to expand on the effort approved a first round of funding to 268 districts in late 2022. Sacramento Unified School District received $25.4 million, which would be spread across 18 schools over six years.

Sacramento ACT, given its partnerships in the community, was asked by the district to perform a needs assessment at the first cohort of six schools. The assessments consisted of one-on-one meetings with 50 mostly Spanish-speaking parents, in which the overwhelming majority expressed the need for better communication between schools and families.

In California, 40% of K-12 students speak a non-English language at home, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Language access is a huge barrier,” said Alma Garcia, a 56-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaker. “Parents like us have less access and opportunities than a person who can speak English.”

Garcia, a mother of three, joined the group about a year and a half ago in hopes of bettering her relationship with her children’s schools, educators and administrators. She was one of a handful of Sacramento moms who cited a general distrust of the education system as a whole.

“We hear that families don’t want to participate, but that’s not true,” Soto said. “But the question is how do we show that?”

The first step is to rebuild trust among families, according to Elvia Vasquez, a community organizer with Sacramento ACT and longtime advocate for community schools.

“Parent decision-making is key to making community schools work,” she said.

To gain that parent buy-in, Sacramento ACT created a working group of about a dozen mothers. The group has since evolved to the comité de padres and grown to roughly 30 mothers.

Their meetings offer opportunities to gain a better understanding of the daily struggles for families at Sacramento schools and empower parents with the appropriate information.

But more than anything, Vasquez said, the meetings are key to creating trust with families who have felt overlooked for years. This approach allows families to embrace the schools, their child’s learning and hopefully, eventually, create a culture of parent involvement that continues beyond the grant funding.

“These schools who are receiving money are not always going to receive it forever,” Vasquez said. “This is just to get them started and eventually they will need to sustain themselves. … Parent engagement is crucial to that.”

A ripple effect of change

While the concerned mothers joined this group for the betterment of their children, they’ve also seen changes in themselves.

Garcia credited the group for improving her social skills and confidence. She pointed to small triumphs in her life such as now feeling comfortable driving to night meetings and practicing her English-speaking skills. Garcia is also motivated to help other parents who were in the same position as her two years ago.

“I just don’t want to improve the schools of my children,” Garcia said. “I want to improve the schools of all students.”

Pulido echoed Garcia’s sentiments, and said her involvement helped her overcome a fear of public speaking.

Both Pulido and Garcia spoke at a Sacramento ACT town hall meeting last week centered around community schools.

“Through my enthusiasm and commitment, I now see the importance of contributing to improving our schools and community,” Garcia told a crowd of roughly 60 people in the South Sacramento Christian Church.

Soto pointed to the two Latina mothers as examples of what her organization is trying to accomplish. Parents, alongside teachers and administrators, should be leading the conversations around education. A community school welcomes the leadership and decision making of parents like Pulido and Garcia.

“They show other parents that they can do it, too,” Soto said. “Other parents, Latinos, moms who only speak Spanish, see themselves in them.”