State budget cuts have forced California school districts to take drastic measures in recent years. But in the sprawling Lodi Unified School District, a proposal to eliminate 32 staff positions providing bilingual services was still a shock to Ger Vang, CEO of the Lao Family Community, when he learned it was on the agenda for the district’s June board meeting.

The proposal, he knew, would be a blow for the district’s 49 schools, which have one of the state’s most diverse student populations. But it would be particularly devastating to a growing effort to involve the district’s parents in their children’s education. Many of these parents speak a language other than English as their primary language, including Spanish, Hmong, Cambodian and Vietnamese.

“Parents want to support district policies,” recalls Vang, a Hmong refugee from Laos whose organization is one of the leaders in the parent-engagement effort. “But when there are no interpreters during meetings, parents feel excluded and stop participating.” He knew it would be important for the Lodi school board to hear from these parents before voting on the measure.

Many parents in the San Joaquin Valley’s low-income and ethnic communities are not accustomed to having a voice in debates like these. Yet studies show that when parents do speak out at school board meetings or organize themselves, they can make a difference. Their efforts have contributed to changes in educational policy and funding decisions in counties throughout the state.

The Irvine Foundation, as part of its focus on increasing civic engagement in underrepresented communities in California, launched its Families Improving Education Initiative in 2008 to promote this kind of involvement. The initiative is managed by Families In Schools, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that, in turn, is working with 11 community organizations in the Central Valley and Inland Empire.

The goal of the initiative is to foster educational policymaking that responds to families’ concerns and better serves California students. “We’re not talking about bake sales and showing up for back-to-school nights,” said Oscar Cruz, president and CEO of Families In Schools. “We are teaching parents how to advocate for their children, how to learn what resources are available, how to advocate, if necessary, for systematic improvement.”

Cruz notes that ethnic communities in California’s Central Valley and Inland Empire have a lower level of civic engagement generally, even as they represent a growing proportion of the state’s population. For many of these parents, involvement in their children’s schools can serve as a gateway to greater engagement in other areas of public life.

“The educational system is where democracy is first practiced and realized,” Cruz says. “It’s a public institution that’s paid for with tax dollars and where your voice should be welcomed and heard. When we exclude families, we are excluding them from democratic values. When we involve them, we are welcoming them into the democratic way of life.”

One of the challenges is that parental engagement often does not come easily to immigrant and non-English speaking parents.

Ger Vang, who was born in Laos’ Xiengkhouang province, notes that, “in our homeland, teachers are the experts who instruct and discipline children. It is disrespectful to question them.” Imagine the leap, he asks, “for a parent with no formal education, who may have never held a pencil in their hand, to go from asking a teacher if their child behaves well to asking if their child is doing well in algebra.”

Add to that the challenge of understanding an educational system so large and complex that even parents who grew up with it can get lost.

The Lao Family Community helps parents navigate this system with monthly, three-hour training sessions in its North Stockton office. Using Power Point slides in English and Hmong, Vang and his staff review such arcane subjects as the bylaws for the English Language Advisory Committees or the rules governing the School Site Councils. A Latino father of four stands ready to translate Vang’s comments for the room’s Spanish-speaking parents.

“These are our community leaders,” Vang explains. “They are willing to do the work to support the policies of the school district and help their children. But no one has ever showed them how to develop an agenda or read a budget. The school does not prepare them.”

That work paid off in June when the neighboring Lodi school district board took up the measure to cut the district’s bilingual services. Lao Family Community and other nonprofit advocates helped organize more than 40 parents who packed the district’s board meeting. The debate ran for three hours, and when the vote was taken, all 32 staff positions were saved.

“We did not say they weren’t being fair. We weren’t crybabies,” Vang says. “We painted the big picture, asking ‘how will you ensure your own mission statement to create programs for every child, so that every child can accomplish to the best of their ability if you cut the bilingual support staff?”

For Cruz, the vote demonstrated the need for a two-way dialogue between school officials and parents.

“The district was able to change its thinking when educators heard the detailed concerns of community members,” he says. “It shows that increasing community involvement in this kind of local decision making will not only produce better, more responsive education policies, but it will also impact how these parents see their role in society.”