Engaging a Diverse Parent Community to Co-Create a Strategic Vision for Growth and Equity
Mundo Verde, a bilingual charter school in Washington, D.C., collaborated with Onward Consulting to actively engage its multicultural parent community in shaping the school’s future. To achieve this, Onward adapted a large-scale facilitation model, originally designed for civic engagement by America Speaks, which emphasizes structured, inclusive dialogue and real-time feedback. This approach provided a platform for over 100 parents to collaboratively identify and prioritize the school’s strategic elements, ensuring their voices played a key role in the school’s growth and evolution.
Opportunity
With an upcoming move to a new campus and plans for expansion, Mundo Verde had a unique opportunity to involve its diverse parent body—comprising both English and Spanish speakers—in strategic planning. The goal was to ensure the school’s development reflected the community’s values and concerns, particularly regarding bilingual education, equity, and sustainability.
Process
Onward Consulting tailored the large-scale facilitation model to suit Mundo Verde’s unique needs, focusing on bilingual engagement and real-time feedback:
- Preparation and Inclusivity: Bilingual materials to ensure all parents, regardless of language, had equal access to information and could fully participate.
- Structured Small Group Discussions: Organized parents into language-specific tables of ten, each led by a facilitator to guide discussions on the school’s values and direction.
- Real-Time Feedback and Synthesis: Leveraged technology to collect and synthesize feedback from all groups, highlighting key themes and areas of consensus to the larger assembly for reflection.
- Iterative Prioritization and Group Voting: Groups discussed the synthesized feedback, refined their ideas, and engaged in real-time voting to ensure decisions were community-driven.
- Transparent Reporting: Compiled all input and decisions into a comprehensive report, offering a clear and actionable roadmap for school leadership that reflected the collective voice of its parent body.
Impact
By adapting the facilitation model to meet the needs of a bilingual school community, Onward successfully led a session where every parent had a voice in shaping the school’s strategic direction. This process strengthened the relationship between Mundo Verde and its parent community, promoted inclusive decision-making, and resulted in a set of clear, community-driven goals to guide the school’s future.