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Parents press CAC for better outreach, transparency and mental‑health support
Summary
At the CAC meeting, parents urged stronger outreach to low‑income and digitally excluded families, asked staff to open collaborative documents and chat, and called for mental‑health resources and a parent peer network to be part of CAC work.
Parents and CAC members used the meeting to press staff for concrete steps to increase access and transparency in CAC work and to prioritize mental‑health supports for families of students with special needs.
Several members said current outreach is not reaching low‑income or paper‑only households and asked for multiple recruitment methods such as printed flyers and targeted outreach through community partners. One participant highlighted that some parents do not have internet access and urged bylaws or procedures that require inclusive outreach methods.
Speaker 2 asked for more time to review materials and requested that documents be shared with adequate notice; members specifically asked for budget and plan documents earlier than they had received them. Fisher agreed to try to provide materials earlier and to make collaboration easier by sharing Google Docs with comment access. "I will open up the chat for next meeting," Fisher said when asked to change platform settings to improve communication.
Parents also urged the CAC to support parent‑to‑parent networks and mental‑health access. Dwayne described a recent family crisis where parent guidance and rapid connection to a therapist led to quick de‑escalation: "We had an emergency meeting. And then my son was better 30 minutes later," he said, urging the CAC to help make those informal supports available more systematically.
Members asked that the CAC identify community partners (for example, regional center service coordinators and community health clinics) who could present to the CAC or participate in subcommittees without necessarily being voting members. Fisher and other members proposed forming subcommittees (parent education, finance, outreach) so the CAC could maintain a manageable voting size while drawing on broader community expertise.
Next steps: staff agreed to re‑send draft documents in the Q&A, open collaborative commenting, and aim to provide budget details as soon as possible; members formed a small working group to draft bylaws and coordinate targeted outreach.
