How to get more parents involved in my school

I found out about this incredible website through a conference I just attended this weekend in New Orleans. My colleagues attended a presentation by Ms. Dabbah and gave me the info.
This may not be the right forum to ask this question but I'll try anyway. I'm the president of the PTA of my school in a suburb of Pennsylvania. We have a large immigrant Hispanic population here. Our problem is that when we organize workshops, the Hispanic parents don't come. Can you give us some guidance around this issue? What can we do to attract them to the school?
Thank you very much and God bless all of you for the amazing work you're doing!

Hi Ms. Shore,
I'm glad your colleagues passed on the info about LIC to you. There are many reasons why parents don't attend school meetings and I'm sure you know most of them. I'll just list them here in case they can help someone else identify issues they need to address:
- They don't find out about them because the information is not sent in their native language. (Maybe you can have all communications translated into Spanish?)
- They work and can't make it during the day (Perhaps you can do it on evenings or Saturday mornings)
- They have younger kids and can't leave them alone (maybe you can get high school students to baby sit during your meetings?)
- They don't find out about meetings because they don't use the Internet portal or they don't check their kids backpacks (Perhaps you can use the phone tree system the night before to circulate a message in Spanish?)
- They are afraid to come to school due to immigration status (If you can't make sure nobody will call immigration to attend the meeting as well (we've had a question about this in this forum) and reassure parents of their safety, maybe you could conduct meetings at a local church?)
- They don't feel welcome in general (Maybe you can improve the "parent friendliness level" of your school by signing Welcoming signs, setting up a coffees station, an armchair next to a basket of children's books, etc.)
- They have a language issue (Can you make sure there's an interpreter during workshops?)

There are lots of other things you can do, starting with making sure everyone in the school assumes that Hispanic parents have high expectations for their children and help them in ways that don't necessarily include attending PTA meetings. They encourage them daily with their words and being an example of hard working people. They may just not be aware of what is expected of them. So, if you could sit with them -even one on one- to discuss what would help their kids with their academics, they will probably be more open to attending your meetings.

I hope this helps!

Mariela Dabbah