Welcome back to Houston newsmakers. I’m excited to introduce you to counting dimpled
the founder and CEO of families empowered. Good
morning. Good morning. How would you describe
families empowered as an organization?
Well, families empowered is a nonprofit organization
that serves families, who are looking for schools.
We
connect families to schools and schools to families. And we do that
for free,
your background has been teaching,
yeah, you’ve done.
A lot. You were on the front lines of education
and saw the challenges in the public school Arena. How did that
really give you the impetus and the desire to do what you’re doing
now?
Well,
I know as an educator and as a parent that parents
are the most important stakeholders in
the life of their children. And so,
what we do is we connect parents with schools
that will meet the needs of their children. Whether they’re
National schools are charter, schools are private schools.
And I just knew when I was looking for schools for my
own children,
it was really complicated and it didn’t need to be.
And so our aim is that every parent finds a school
that’s a right fit for their child and we just give them a little bit
of help. I noticed that
the thousands of families you’ve helped
on your website. You said 13 years, you’ve done
a hundred thousand
families more 80% of those are families of color. 60%
of Spanish-speaking.
What is it about that demographic that Drew you to help?
And do you think that our Educational Systems
are sometimes biased not intentionally
but somehow in biased against those folk being able to get
an equal shot at some of those good quality education’s. Yeah, that’s
a, that’s a great question. Thank you for asking it. And I would say, yes,
I
don’t think the system is intentionally biased, but I think it
is
very preferential to people who have advantages
and time is a very big Advantage
having digital
Access is a big advantage. And so when you’re applying to schools
K-12 schools,
you have to know the rules of the game, you need to know the deadlines. You need
to have access to a computer,
you need some time
to fill out applications and you need to know
the different sorts of applications and what’s required.
That’s a lot, isn’t it? Yeah,
once upon a time, we used to just get up and go to school. I saw
a part of your website. We
were the people
were many people couldn’t name another school, there was
Their neighborhood
and you said that’s a disadvantage, then? Yes, 87 percent of the
parents who come to us when they we first start working with
them,
cannot name. A school other than their neighborhood school
and there are lots of diverse
really interesting options
and our families.
As you said, they tend to be families of color. 60% our Spanish-speaking
and
they just
need a little support to navigate the options
to find schools and then apply to them
when someone thinks, okay.
Okay, I got to figure this out. How do they come to you? How do they find
you? When they
need the kind of help that you offer?
So, there are lots of ways parents find us. First of all, thank you for
doing this piece. I know that’s going to help parents find us,
but we go to parents, we go directly to them. So we host
free events in
places like the Houston Zoo.
We reach out to parents via text social media
schools,
refer parents to us, believe it or not. So yeah,
we have
preschools that refer parameter.
It’s to US schools when children are transferring to middle school,
and
then there’s Word of Mouth.
She told a friend and she told her friend and she told her friends.
So, so this whole process has been ongoing for a while.
You’ve been able to see the kinds of things that families do that?
They do? Well
what would you say? Are some of the biggest mistakes
that families make along the way as they’re trying to get their child into better
Educational Opportunity.
Yeah, so again, as I said before, the rules of the game are really important
and our parents often
Deadlines. So right now, today
priority deadlines are open for
HIC magnet schools for charter schools and private schools.
Those deadlines often closed at the end of
January, for the priority deadline
and our parents are often applying after that priority
deadline and we know that advantaged families, families, with means
and money.
They’re getting those applications in
right away. And so we, we want our families to
know about deadlines and to be reminded
Added
so what’s your website
www.farkyaratanlar.org
or going to put that on our website? But we have boy to talk about. We’re going to do
is make those extra
so you’ll be able to go to the website and get more of our conversations. Thank you so much
Colleen. Thank you so much. Good luck helping families. Find those
magical educational opportunities that they need. Well, we appreciate
your help making that happen quite welcome.