By Jeremy T. Martin
In 2020, the heightened attention on the dual-pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism (Mapp & Bergman, 2021) led school districts nationwide to examine policies and procedures for practices (or outcomes) that left historically marginalized students and their families on the periphery of education. One potential outcome of these reviews is to enhance a school’s (and district’s) efforts to serve underrepresented and historically marginalized students and their families with equity—defined here as any policy, practice, or procedure that is focused on fairness and justice (Mapp & Bergman, 2021)—as the anchor guiding all partnerships. Research suggests rural schools and communities have specific advantages that equip them with the tools to make partnership efforts more effective. First, their smaller enrollments (Bauch, 2001) and more intimate relationships support partnership development. Second, school leaders may more easily foster a stronger spirit of trust and respect among families, school staff, and other community partners, a spirit that promotes teamwork and collaboration and, ultimately, more personalized learning strategies for students (Zuckerman, 2020).
The findings and policy recommendations presented in this brief emerge from a qualitative case study exploring the Berea Community Elementary School’s (BCES) and the Berea Independent School District’s adaptation of the dual-capacity building framework (DCBF) for family-school partnerships (Mapp & Bergman, 2019; Mapp & Bergman, 2021). The DCBF focuses on building capacity among educators and families to enact process conditions (i.e., building trust and valuing the expertise of nondominant families) and organizational conditions (i.e., considering how time, personnel, and funding resources are allocated to strengthen partnerships) (Mapp & Bergman, 2021) that lead to more liberatory education settings.
Located in a rural community of Appalachian Kentucky, BCES has a student population of nearly 500 where more than 85 percent of students are white (NCES, 2022) and nearly two thirds of students are economically disadvantaged (Kentucky Department of Education, 2022).1 Through semi-structured interviews (Weiss, 1994), families, school staff, and district leaders shared their experiences advocating for a review of systemic racism and its presence in the school district in the aftermath of the 2020 racial uprisings and the Black Lives Matter movement. Data was collected starting in the spring of 2021. While there were a number of themes generated from our review of BCES’s family engagement efforts, this policy brief focuses on the theme of striving toward equity.
Research Questions
- How is the Berea Community Elementary School building effective partnerships
between families and school? - How has the school developed its equity frameworks and leveraged families to meet
the school’s equity goals?