We’ve Been Doing It Wrong: Community Engagement Isn’t What You Think

Community engagement is the most overused, underdefined term in education. We list it in mission statements. We reference it in grants. We say we’re doing it. But are we?

Community engagement gets reduced to events. A festival here, a flyer there, a sign-in sheet at back-to-school night. That’s not engagement. That’s attendance. Attendance doesn't build trust. It doesn’t deepen partnerships. It doesn’t shift systems.

If we want to transform schools into hubs of equity, connection, and success, we need to reimagine community engagement, starting with families, but not ending there.

From Family Involvement to True Partnership

My dissertation on parent and caregiver engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed something powerful: families don’t just want to be invited to the table, they want to be seen as partners in building it. They want to co-create.

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory reminds us that children don’t grow in a vacuum. They grow in concentric circles of influence; home, school, neighborhood, society. Community engagement must honor and activate every circle, not just the ones that show up on campus.

What I learned from the stories of parents and caregivers across the Hudson Valley was this:

• Engagement is contextual. A parent managing a second shift job and two kids on IEPs may engage in vastly different ways than the PTA president. Both are valid.

• Support matters. Families engage when they feel supported, not surveilled. When schools shift from compliance-driven check-ins to genuine connection, trust follows.

• Communication is the bridge. Not just about what’s happening, but why. Not just from school, but with families, in all their languages and lived realities.

  
  

These truths must extend to community partners: faith leaders, youth organizations, health clinics, libraries, elders, and neighbors. Engagement isn’t a strategy; it’s a relationship.

So What Should Community Engagement Be?

Let’s redefine it. Let’s build a model that aligns with what we know from research and from lived experience. Here’s what real community engagement needs to be:

Reciprocal

Community engagement isn’t something schools do to or for others; it’s something they do with others. That means co-planning, co-owning, and co-reflecting.

Contextual

One-size-fits-all programming doesn’t work. Engagement must be grounded in the specific strengths, histories, and needs of the community it serves.

Asset-Based

We must stop approaching families and communities from a deficit lens. Every household and neighborhood has wisdom, culture, and leadership to offer.

Sustained and Systemic

A single event won’t move the needle. Engagement must be embedded in school culture, leadership goals, and district planning, not a checkbox on a Title I report.

Healing and Hopeful

Especially in post-pandemic landscapes, engagement must acknowledge trauma, build trust, and create spaces of care and connection.

From Theory to Practice: A New Kind of Engagement

As I transition from public service into consulting, I carry with me the voices of parents who told me:

• “We didn’t choose this, but we learned a lot.”

• “I became the teacher I never thought I’d be.”

• “I want to stay involved now, but differently.”

If schools want to survive and thrive in the 21st century, they must widen the lens. They must see engagement not as event-planning, but as ecosystem-building.

The question isn’t “How many parents came to the meeting?”

It’s: “How did we build trust today?”

“How did we learn from our community?”

And: “What did we change because of it?”

Community engagement isn’t fluff. It’s infrastructure.

It’s not decoration. It’s foundation.

It’s time we start treating it that way.

Let’s stop performing engagement. Let’s start embodying it.

Let’s stop speaking about families and communities and start speaking with them.

No school, no matter how innovative or well-staffed, can educate a child alone.