Feb 22, 2021
What I love most about DC PAVE-Parents Amplifying Voices in Education-is that it reinvents an outdated model for building parent leadership. In the conventional model parents meet with teachers to assess their children’s progress and attend school-wide events largely to affirm decisions that have already been made. PAVE wants parents to be in the room where the real decision making is made and prepares them to do exactly that. It focuses on Black and Brown lower-income parents who often feel overlooked by school and city officials and in the era of Covid19, are stressed by a loss of jobs, income and housing. PAVE teaches parents how educational systems work and invites them to shape and propose their own policy platform. Most importantly, parents learn how to partner with city officials to make change possible. PAVE was founded by Maya Martin Cadogan, whose earliest lessons in advocacy came from her mother, an activist devoted to educational equity. There is so much information, nuance and richness in a conversation with Maya that you may have to listen twice. I know I did.