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From Engagement to Academic Impact: Turning Family Partnerships Into Action
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT
From Engagement to Academic Impact: Turning Family Partnerships Into Action
Presented by Dr. Cristina Melendez, Former Deputy Chancellor of Family, Community, and Student Empowerment, New York City Department of Education; Windy Lopez-Aflitto, Senior Vice President of Professional Learning, Learning Heroes; and Samantha Fils-Aimé, Assistant Vice President, Curriculum and Instruction, Springboard Collaborative
Moderated by Keo Chea-Young, Ed.D., Academic Success Partner, Springboard Collaborative
Sponsored by Springboard Collaborative
Learn more about earning a CE certificate and our accessibility features.
Families want to support their children’s learning. Yet many do not have access to clear information about how their children are doing academically or what they can do to support progress. Educators value strong family partnerships but may lack the time, training, tools, and systems needed to build them consistently.
In this edLeader Panel, Dr. Cristina Melendez, former Deputy Chancellor of Family, Community, and Student Empowerment at New York City Public Schools, shares lessons from leading family partnership work across a large, diverse school system. Learning Heroes shares insights from its just-published national parent research, including what families understand about their children’s academic progress, how they want to support learning, and where opportunities remain to better connect families with actionable information and support.
Building on these findings, Dr. Keo Chea-Young and Samantha Fils-Aimé of Springboard Collaborative introduce the Family Enablement Domains, Essential Pathways, and Standards (DEPS) Framework, an open-source, evidence-informed framework that focuses on the conditions that help families build the knowledge, confidence, tools, and agency to support learning. Samantha is a former District of Columbia Public Schools literacy leader, bringing additional practitioner and system-level perspectives to the conversation.
Viewers will:
- Examine what national parent research reveals about families’ experiences, needs, and desire to support their children’s learning
- Identify the conditions that help effective family engagement build families’ knowledge, confidence, capacity, and agency to support learning
- Consider how schools and systems can build educator capacity and create structures that support strong family-educator partnerships
- Hear lessons about building trust, addressing mindsets and beliefs about families, and sustaining authentic family partnerships
- Identify ways to make information about student learning more understandable and actionable for families
Viewers will leave with research, a ready-to-use practical framework, and actionable strategies for strengthening family-educator partnerships in support of student learning. This recorded edLeader Panel will be of interest to PreK-12 teachers, school and district leaders, instructional leaders, and family engagement leaders.
About the Presenters
Dr. Cristina Melendez is the former Deputy Chancellor of Family, Community, and Student Empowerment for the New York City Department of Education. An experienced education leader and advocate for students and families, Dr. Melendez has dedicated her career to strengthening partnerships among schools, families, and communities to support student success. Throughout her leadership, Dr. Melendez has championed meaningful family engagement and worked to ensure that parents and caregivers have a strong voice in their children’s education. Her work has focused on building inclusive school communities, expanding opportunities for collaboration, and empowering families as essential partners in creating positive educational experiences and outcomes for all students.
Windy Lopez-Aflitto is Senior Vice President of Professional Learning at Learning Heroes and brings more than 20 years of experience in family engagement, education, and philanthropy. A former elementary school teacher, she has spent much of her career helping families and communities engage more meaningfully in children’s learning. Before joining Learning Heroes, Windy worked at American Express on its nonprofit leadership development philanthropic platform and spent nearly a decade at Scholastic helping develop family and community engagement initiatives. She has also served as a guest lecturer at NYU and at the University of the South in collaboration with the Yale Child Study Center. In this edWebinar, Windy will bring Learning Heroes’ perspective on what families need to understand and support their children’s academic progress.
Samantha Fils-Aimé is an educator and instructional leader with more than 19 years of experience in urban education. As Assistant Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction at Springboard Collaborative, she leads curriculum and instructional strategy and partners with school systems nationwide to strengthen student learning and family–educator partnerships. She helped develop the Family Enablement Domains, Essential Pathways, and Standards (DEPS) Framework and oversees student instruction, family enablement learning experiences, and professional learning models. Prior to Springboard, Samantha served as a school administrator and district-level leader with DC Public Schools, where she led strategies, curricula, and professional learning initiatives to strengthen instructional systems and improve student and educator outcomes. Samantha is committed to building systems in which educators and families are valued as essential partners in student learning. She holds an M.A. in teaching from UNC Chapel Hill.
About the Moderator
Dr. Keo Chea-Young is an Academic Success Partner at Springboard Collaborative, where she draws on more than 20 years of experience in literacy education, curriculum and program design, family engagement, and academic research. During her tenure at Springboard, she has helped shape the organization’s student- and family-facing curricula and led research and design efforts focused on strengthening student learning and family-educator partnerships. Her current work focuses on translating research and implementation learning into practical strategies for schools and systems, including work related to Springboard’s Family Enablement Domains, Essential Pathways, and Standards (DEPS) Framework. Dr. Chea-Young earned her Ed.D. in reading, writing, and literacy from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Ed. in language and literacy from Harvard University. She began her career as an elementary educator and literacy coach.
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Learn more about earning a CE certificate and our accessibility features.
Springboard works with districts to accelerate learning for the students who need it most. Every program is built around family-educator partnership: families are activated as members of the teaching team, not invited as observers. In literacy, that model produces an average of five months of learning gains in as few as seven weeks, with family participation exceeding 89% nationwide.
