Parents, Families & School Communication FAQ
How school leaders can build stronger relationships with families and handle difficult parent situations.
Parent Responsibility & Accountability
Whose job is it to get kids to school every day?
Parents'. The simplest explanation for the chronic absenteeism crisis is the correct one: parents are no longer making their kids come to school. No amount of engaging curriculum or caring teachers can substitute for a parent who says "get up, get dressed, you're going." Schools can teach kids when they show up, but they cannot make them show up. Watch the video →
Should schools spend energy complaining about parents?
No. Parenting matters enormously, but complaining about it doesn't improve a single outcome. Parents are outside our control, and they always will be. The productive move is to focus on the factors we can control — effective instruction, consistent discipline, a safe and orderly environment — even when families are working at cross purposes with us. Watch the video →
How much time are kids actually with their parents vs. at school?
About 88% of the year, kids are in the care of their parents. School accounts for roughly 12% of a child's time. That math matters. We should absolutely do everything we can during the school day — feed kids, teach them, support them — but no school program can fully compensate for what's happening (or not happening) the other 88% of the time. Watch the video →
Should truancy courts get involved when kids aren't coming to school?
Yes. Compulsory education means compulsory. If a child is chronically missing school, the parents need to face real pressure to send them. Nobody wants a parent to go to jail, but the threat of legal consequences is sometimes the only thing that gets families to take attendance seriously. Educational neglect has lifelong consequences, and we can't just look the other way. Watch the video →
Can makeup work really substitute for being in school?
No. The whole experience of learning in a classroom — labs, discussions, collaboration, live instruction — cannot be reduced to a packet. If you pull your kid out for a cheaper vacation during the school year, understand that the worksheets we send home are a pale shadow of what they're missing. Plan vacations during school breaks. Watch the video →
Cell Phones & Screen Time at Home
Should kids take their phones to bed at night?
Absolutely not. This is the single biggest opportunity parents have to protect their kids from the harms of phone use. When a phone goes to bed with a child, sleep goes out the window — and with it, mental health, academic performance, and next-day readiness for school. Put a charging station in the kitchen. Use a real alarm clock. This is non-negotiable. Watch the video →
How young are kids getting smartphones, and what's the impact?
The average child now gets a smartphone at age 10 or 11, and 6 out of 10 kids are using their phones between midnight and 5 a.m. Even in the best-case scenario where nothing bad happens, these kids are chronically sleep-deprived — which is directly linked to depression, anxiety, and poor school performance. Parents need to set firm rules, not suggestions. Watch the video →
Are phones at night contributing to absenteeism?
Almost certainly. When kids are on their phones all night, they don't get the sleep they need, and they're not ready for school in the morning. A lot of the absenteeism crisis traces back to this one parenting decision: letting kids go to bed with their devices. Take the phone at night, and you solve multiple problems at once. Watch the video →
Do parents need to be able to text their kids during the school day?
No. Every parent managed just fine before smartphones existed, and the research is clear that constant parent-child texting during school is actively harmful. It distracts kids from learning, transfers parental anxiety onto children, and normalizes the idea that school can be interrupted at any time. Schools have phones for genuine emergencies. That's enough. Watch the video →
What about parents who say they need to reach their child in case of a school shooting?
School shootings are real and terrifying, but they're also statistically extremely rare — about a one-in-a-million chance. We cannot let an extremely unlikely event become the justification for policies that actively harm kids every single day. If there's a genuine emergency, schools have procedures. Texting your child during a lockdown doesn't make them safer. Watch the video →
What's wrong with parents texting their kids all day?
Some parents are essentially using their children as emotional support — texting out of boredom, anxiety, or impulsivity and expecting immediate responses. Teachers report parents FaceTiming kids during class, texting distressing family news mid-lesson, and calling to ask what they want for dinner. Every one of those messages pulls a student out of learning. Schools must hold this boundary firmly. Watch the video →
Discipline & Behavior
Why does suspension actually work?
Because it inconveniences the parent. When a child is suspended, the parent has to deal with it — arrange childcare, stay home from work, confront the behavior. That parental inconvenience is the mechanism that drives change. When schools promise to keep every child in school no matter what, they're essentially telling parents: your child's behavior is never your problem. That message is backfiring spectacularly. Watch the video →
What is "reverse suspension" and could it work?
Reverse suspension means requiring the parent to come to school and sit with their child for the day instead of sending the child home. The parent becomes the child's teacher for the day in a conference room — no electronics, no escape. It's especially worth considering for younger students where out-of-school suspension is restricted, because it still engages the parent and gives the classroom a break from unsafe behavior. Watch the video →
Is "gentle parenting" behind the behavior crisis in schools?
Gentle parenting at its best includes firm, loving boundaries. The problem is when parents interpret it as no boundaries and no consequences at all. Swinging from overly harsh parenting to total permissiveness doesn't help kids — it just creates a different set of problems. If your version of gentle parenting means your child can hit a teacher without consequence, that's not gentle parenting. That's neglect. Watch the video →
A parent sent a banana to school after their child punched a teacher. What's going on?
This is what happens when we replace personal responsibility with "unmet needs" thinking taken to its extreme. The parents didn't apologize, didn't offer to pay for the broken glasses, didn't address the behavior. They sent a banana to prevent hunger on the bus ride. Being slightly hungry does not make you punch someone. We have to teach kids that behavior is a choice they control, not something that happens to them when conditions aren't perfect. Watch the video →
What if parents aren't helping their kids develop self-discipline?
This is a real and growing problem. A lot of kids are arriving at school with almost no self-discipline, likely due to years of unrestricted screen time starting in infancy. Schools can't fully substitute for this, but they also can't lower the bar. Self-discipline is what makes education valuable in the first place — without it, knowledge alone won't get you far. We have to keep expecting it, even when home isn't reinforcing it. Watch the video →
School-Family Communication & Trust
Should schools publish a syllabus for every course, K-12?
Yes. When parents can see exactly what their child will learn, what books they'll read, and what projects they'll complete, it builds enormous trust. Colleges have published syllabi for decades. There's no good reason K-12 schools can't do the same — except that it would expose how much variation exists between classrooms, schools, and districts. That transparency is exactly why we should do it. Watch the video →
Should schools translate communications into families' home languages?
Absolutely. If you send everything in English, you're shutting out the families who need engagement the most. Machine translation has gotten good enough that there's no excuse not to translate newsletters, announcements, and important communications. Even for families who are fluent in English, the symbolic message matters: we value you, we see you, you belong here. Watch the video →
Are we canceling school too much?
Yes. Excessive PD days, early dismissals, weather cancellations for forecasts that may or may not materialize — all of it erodes trust with parents. We have 180 days, which is less than half the calendar year. Every one of those days should be a full day of learning. Parents have limited patience for rearranging their lives around random cancellations, and frankly, they're right to be frustrated. Watch the video →
Does school choice actually empower parents?
It assumes a level of information that most parents don't have. Parents often don't know much about what's happening in their current school, let alone other schools their child could attend. The families with the most time, education, and English proficiency navigate choice systems best — which means choice can actually widen inequity rather than close it. Watch the video →
When is the best time to ask the public for more school funding?
Three weeks after school gets out for summer. That's when parents are viscerally reminded of the enormous value schools provide — not just education, but supervision, structure, meals, and socialization. Running a ballot measure during the school year, when everything is humming along and parents are happy, is terrible timing. Ask when people feel the absence. Watch the video →
Parenting Culture & Student Development
Do kids need to experience failure and disappointment?
Yes. Small setbacks build the resilience muscles kids need for life's bigger challenges. Helicopter parenting — steering kids away from every possible disappointment — creates fragility, not safety. If your child has never lost, never been nervous, never been told no, they're going to crumble the first time real adversity hits. Let them experience minor failures while the stakes are still low. Watch the video →
Should parents be aware that their behavior affects teacher retention?
Absolutely. The best teachers have options, and they will leave schools where parents make the job unbearable. When parents are aggressive, demanding, or constantly undermining teachers, they're driving talent away from their own child's school. If you want great teachers for your kid, be the kind of parent great teachers want to work with. Watch the video →
Can an iPad app teach a toddler to read?
No. Developmentally, most two-year-olds aren't ready to read regardless of the medium, and no app — even at $500 a month — changes that. The key ingredient in teaching a child to read is a human being teaching them, especially phonics. More screen time for toddlers is the opposite of what they need. Put the iPad away and read to your kid. Watch the video →
Have travel ball parents ruined youth sports?
In many communities, yes. When a handful of parents living vicariously through their kids push intensity to an extreme level, it eliminates casual participation for everyone else. Kids should be allowed to be casually into a sport without committing at an Olympic level. The expected return on a travel ball investment is deeply negative for nearly every family. Let kids play. Watch the video →
Should disability accommodations be extended to all students based on parenting philosophy?
No. IEPs and specially designed instruction exist for students with genuine disabilities, and they work. But when parents use disability frameworks to impose their personal beliefs about how schools should run — no rules, no consequences, no expectations — it dilutes services for kids who actually need them. Accommodations are exceptions made for good reasons. They're not a vehicle for parenting vibes. Watch the video →