One of the challenges of working in our community is accurately portraying the challenges of our community while also talking about its assets. A reality of families in our six focus schools is that over 90% of children receive free or reduced lunch rates because of family income.

Yet, just because families are struggling to survive financially does not mean that they care about their children less than middle income families or that they don’t have skills and talents that could benefit our community.

We firmly believe that each child and parent in our community should be empowered to succeed and thrive. Each person has the raw talent though the system that they are living in does not make thriving easy.

Many of the parents in our area speak Spanish and struggle to move through a school system that is built for English speakers. A majority of the people in Jeffco Schools are white, middle income and English speaking.

This is all coming to a head with the Jefferson Plan for restructuring our area schools. Parent involvement and engagement is hard in our area. School Accountability Committees and PTAs are not yet in all our local schools though good effort has been put toward starting them. Parents are not mobilized and empowered to have a voice.

We aren’t blaming anyone, but we are striving to find a solution.

All our parents need to have a voice in what is happening in our local schools. They need to be empowered.

As Edgewater Collective, we are driven to do everything in our power to create opportunities for parents to have a voice in this process and play a role in shaping the education system for our kids.

This is the case in the suburbs and should be a reality in our community as well.