Palatine District 15 spotlights multilingual parent groups and community hubs in wide-ranging engagement update

At a regularly scheduled Palatine CCSD 15 Board of Education meeting, district staff and community partners presented a broad update on family and community engagement, emphasizing supports for bilingual families and a network of local service hubs.

The presentation, led by the district’s multilingual and family-engagement team, reported that District 15 serves just over 11,000 students and that 3,578 participate in its bilingual programs. The district said more than 80 languages are spoken among students, with the most common including Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Telugu, Korean and Bulgarian.

The report outlined the structure of the multilingual parent advisory committees (BPACs) and the umbrella Multilingual Parent Advisory Committee (MPAC), noting that BPACs are required in Illinois when 20 or more students who speak the same language qualify for bilingual services at a school. Jessica Marones and Vicky Galvan, leaders of the district’s long‑standing Spanish BPAC, described bylaws development, events that have driven parent participation and bilingual‑focused programming such as family concerts and culture camps.

Parent mentors and community partners detailed measurable outcomes. Addy Gonzalez, parent‑mentor coordinator, described a parent mentor program that began five years ago and now operates in five schools; the district said mentors volunteer roughly 100 hours and many have completed professional development, with several becoming paraprofessionals or school employees. Gonzalez reported 27 mentors hold first‑aid/CPR certification and many have completed mental‑health first‑aid or QPR suicide‑prevention training.

Partners for Our Communities executive director Seth Mullaney Kovash and other partners described stable local hubs that provide tutoring, mobile food pantries and registration assistance. The district cited 65 community registration workshops that produced 1,220 student registrations and more than 1,000 participants across dozens of events. A representative of the preschool BPAC, Rigoberto Barreto, said the bilingual preschool supports children’s social and academic growth and helps families learn how to reinforce skills at home.

District staff announced upcoming family‑facing events, including a multilingual math night in April and an April 23 author presentation on children’s digital well‑being, and said a one‑minute video highlighting community engagement would be shown at the district’s upcoming gala.

Why it matters: District officials emphasized family engagement as a lever for higher attendance, reduced discipline incidents, increased social‑emotional competence and stronger academic outcomes, especially for students learning English. The presentation positioned parent leadership and community partners as central to the district’s strategy for equitable access and student support.

What’s next: Staff said they will continue to expand parent mentor coverage to additional schools, refine program data collection, and publicize the spring events and summer opportunities that were discussed.