When Sarina Eckman’s son began attending Boulder Elementary School, she had a unique insider perspective on her child’s education that most parents lack: She was the school secretary. Now, five months into a new job as the school’s first-ever family engagement facilitator, Eckman is on a mission to build relationships between the school and students’ families who aren’t afforded the same immersion she had in her child’s education.
The 20-hour-a-week family engagement facilitator position is funded through a grant the school received through the Montana Comprehensive Literacy State Development Program, commonly referred to as the literacy grant, which aims to boost literacy among disadvantaged children statewide. Part of the grant’s mission is ensuring that families engage with their children’s education and with the school—and helping families who are struggling to do so.
That’s where Eckman comes in.
“In general, nationwide, they’re finding that family engagement is really key to literacy and helping kids succeed—engaging family, the student and the school,” she said. “For me, it kind of comes down to relationships. It’s those relationships between the school staff, not just the teachers.”
Eckman and Rochelle Hesford, the 21st Century Grant Director for Boulder, Jefferson High School, Basin and Twin Bridges, who oversees after-school child care and Eckman’s position, pointed out that research shows that student literacy and achievement significantly improve when families are more involved in their children’s education.
Eckman, 38, grew up in Basin and attended Boulder Elementary School and Jefferson High School. She spent years away from the area, earning degrees and working in government communications, “and then I moved back to raise my son here, because this is where I wanted him to grow up and go to school.”
Although she’s only just begun her job as the family engagement facilitator—the position is funded for three years and can be renewed for longer—Eckman said she now realizes her work in family engagement began when she was hired as a secretary in December 2017.
“What I realized doing this position is that what I was doing [as a secretary] was family engagement,” she said, noting that secretaries are crucial intermediaries between families and school staff, coordinating student absences, pick-ups and drop-offs, illnesses and communications. They’re also often the first point of contact for families when they call or enter the school building. “If I hadn’t worked here, I feel like I would be in the dark about a lot of stuff, and so it makes me feel for parents.”
Now, with a job she can often perform remotely from home, “I’m getting to see more of a parent perspective,” and she wants to ensure that families are “feeling like they have a part in their [children’s] education.”
“I know a lot of the families here and I know a lot about what it’s like to live here. I grew up at a time when everybody had a good state job right here in Boulder,” but now that dynamic has changed, she said. “In the past around here, it was maybe just send your kid to school and the school takes care of it. Parents are the first educator of a child, and we would really like to see parents have a say in what their children are learning.”
A major component of that, Eckman said, is not just asking children what they did in school on a given day, but also engaging with teachers and support staff to offer feedback and to better understand how children are doing in the classroom. “Kids are learning all the time. You can incorporate literacy and learning into everything,” she said.
And beyond that, “I really want the school to be a place where families can come when they need something.” If the school can’t help a family with a given problem, Eckman said, she aims to be able to put them in contact with people or an organization that can. Her vision for engagement and relationship building stretches beyond direct academic performance and also encompasses children’s social and emotional wellbeing, because “they can’t learn if their other needs aren’t taken care of first.”
Getting started on those goals hasn’t been easy.
“I feel like it’s been a steep learning curve for me. I thought it was about a bunch of individual engaging things, like an event or a newsletter,” she said. “What I am learning it really is about now is fostering relationships. The key is that I thought it would happen real fast and I would do a bunch of stuff, but I’m finding out it’s happening over time.”
Among other activities, Eckman has taken over the task of calling families whose students miss a certain number of school days. Since engaging with families is the focus of her job, she said, she’s able to spend more time talking with each family to understand students’ absences and working to boost attendance. She also wants to make the school more welcoming by improving its signage so visitors can more easily find their way. For new parents, she hopes to establish a “parent resource group” of tenured local families who can help new families in the school district “get on their feet.”
Hesford noted that “the pandemic has kind of put this asterisk on everything and how we do it.” Eckman agreed: “I feel like the pandemic puts another twist on it. If there was no pandemic, it would be different implementing all of these things.”
Another challenge, Eckman said, is that income disparity can affect how people relate to each other. “People communicate in different ways,” she said. Hesford said that before the pandemic about 65–75% of Boulder Elementary students qualified for free or reduced-cost meals, although that figure was trending downward before the pandemic.
“The other hard part right now is I feel that everyone is working at the end of their rope,” because of the pandemic, whether it’s families or teachers, Eckman said, “and I don’t want to ask them to do any more.” Hesford said that improving engagement doesn’t mean more work, but “it’s just tweaking what they already do, fine-tuning it.”
And regardless of a family’s background or the challenges they face, Eckman said, her goal is simply “letting them know that they’re welcome.”
More information about family engagement at Boulder Elementary is available at www.bgs.k12.mt.us/familyengagment.
