Parent Institute for Quality Education Inc.

To provide families with the knowledge and skills to partner with schools and communities to ensure their children achieve their full potential.

We are dedicated to achieving social and economic equity for all through education.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Strengthen Measurable Program Impact and Outcomes

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Two: Strengthen Advocacy and Influence

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Goal Three: Strengthen Staff and Board Effectiveness

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Describe an investment in leadership

One example of leadership development we have undertaken in the past year is to collectively develop and implement an organization-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy. This involved the leadership team conducting an organizational culture assessment and analysis in order to understand the competencies for organization effectiveness, develop and align a DEI strategy and culture change initiative with our new strategic plan, clarify the shared vision amongst leadership and staff, and identify opportunities for implementation. Subsequently, the leadership team has been helping engage staff in DEI training sessions, in addition to receiving DEI training from an outside consultant. The goal of these sessions was to help staff learn more about and asses their own biases to more effectively lead the social justice and educational equity work with families and communities.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

Over the past year, we have undertaken a wide range of outreach activities, including empowering and elevating family voices, leading on state and local policy, taking part in and leading coalitions, developing a Policy Framework and launching a PIQE mobile application. We have successfully engaged and partnered with over 18,000 families enabling them to advocate on issues affecting their communities, such as informing Local Control and Accountability Plans. We have been active participants in coalitions, informing policymakers on the needs of families. We have also encouraged legislation to promote educational equity and meet the needs of families, such as efforts to improve digital equity, support learning recovery, respond to student’s mental health needs, increasing accountability for public schools, and strengthening financial aid for students.

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated transformative responses to our in-person service delivery model. Within 72 hours of school closures across the state, we transitioned from in-person instruction to online content delivery, redeployed our resources, and creatively managed staff's transition to remote working environments. As a trusted community and education partner and messenger we innovated quickly to extended our work to support families and schools in a virtual content by doing the following: (1) Reached out to our school partners to let them know we were ready to support them by sharing information with families as a trusted community resource and navigator to connect with families; (2) Made over 61,000 phone calls to families across the state to ask how they were doing and share information on the website, asked them about their ability to stay in touch, and let them know we were there to support them through the uncertainty we were facing. We translated materials (e.g., Mixteco, Mandarin, Hmong) and created videos to provide information in a more accessible manner for families with limited reading skills; (3) Updated our website and integrated messaging on our social media pages with information about free meals, updates on COVID-19, low-cost internet, free hotspots and online academic supports, rental assistance, immigration, and more; (4) Developed web and mobile technology training for all staff. Instructions included visuals to walk parents through the process of getting online; (5) Coached and supported individual families with one-on-one supports to help them access technology by helping them set up an email , use the web for resources, monitor social media, use video conferencing, and how to use their school’s portal; and (6) Adapted the Parent Engagement curriculum in real-time to respond to the evolving needs of schools and families in an online world.