ANNOUNCEMENT: REPORT RELEASE
In June 2020, the California legislature passed Senate Bill (SB) 98 establishing minimum expectations for teaching and learning during COVID-19. SB 98 also suspended the usual Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) for 2020-2021 and required a new Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan (LCP) instead.

The following briefs addressed some key questions related to today's learning environment: How did California school districts plan to engage families during the pandemic and school closures? How might California leaders strengthen the LCAP, other planning tools, and systems of support in order to strengthen family engagement?
Two Policy Briefs About Lessons Learned in the Time of COVID-19

The Opportunity Institute (OI) examined a stratified sample of 20 Learning Continuity Plans. OI holistically reviewed and analyzed these plans using a standardized protocol, supplemented by interviews with leaders from three districts. The Parent Organization Network (PON) contributed to the project by reviewing the LCP analysis and the findings of the brief.

Policy Brief 1: Family Engagement in the Time of COVID-19 outlines key findings about family engagement and provides recommendations for how districts, partners, and state agency leaders can support authentic and equitable engagement strategies.
Key Takeaways:

  • Most districts planned for reactive one-on-one contact necessary to improve student attendance, but the LCPs rarely included the type of proactive one-to-one outreach between teachers and families essential to building meaningful relationships.
  • Few districts described relationship-centered family engagement training for education professionals in their LCPs making it difficult to determine if or how they were effective in building relationships.
  • LCPs varied in their support for developing families' digital literacy and capacity to support learning at home, a gap that must be addressed to better support families.
Policy Brief 2: School District Plans in the Time of COVID-19 outlines what worked well and not as well about the LCP that could influence how we think about the LCAP and other planning tools going forward.
"Schools that had already established close working relationships between teachers and families did much better in serving and staying connected to students during pandemic-related school closures." -Deanna Niebuhr, OI California Policy and Program Director.

"As schools reopen and educators strategize on how they can best address students' academic and socio-emotional needs, they must lead this process by proactively helping teachers and parents build positive and meaningful one-to-one relationships to support student success. Schools can no longer rely on reactive traditional engagement because too many of our students were not able to connect in distance learning and have fallen behind academically." - Araceli Simeón, PON Project Director
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A special thanks to Opportunity Institute for partnering with PON to produce this timely brief. Our two organizations are driven to promote equitable policy and practice so all students, including those living in underserved and under-resourced communities, have access to a quality education. We appreciate the opportunity to share our knowledge and expertise to support school districts and improve their capacity and ability to better serve their students.