The Duquesne Community Support Maps

Over the past school year, a team of LSX Fellows—principal Erica Slobodnik, researcher Susana Beltrán-Grimm, journalist Tara García Mathewson, assistant superintendent Tabitha Marino, principal Scott Miller, social entrepreneur Miroslava Rodríguez, and children’s book author Sheila Thomas—engaged in deep listening and feedback sessions with parents to design new tools that strengthen communication and relationships between families and schools.

At Duquesne Elementary School, parents and caregivers sought support for a wide range of needs, such as housing, transportation, and child care. In response, Slobodnik and the team of fellows designed an interactive map of community resources, which they translated to Spanish, Arabic, and Pashto, the most commonly spoken languages by English learners at the school. The map includes a QR code, which families can scan to easily access the community resource links, phone numbers, and directions.

Read more about the design process behind this innovation in our blog, "Designing Tools to Strengthen Communication and Relationships Between Families and Schools," and explore the policies that enable this type of collaboration in our brief, "What Parents Want: How Policies Can Spur School-to-Family Connections and Build Trust."