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As 2025 begins, CAFE looks back on a year of building strong family connections in schools and communities. Rita Perez, Senior Education Equity Specialist and Project Director for CAFE, shares highlights from 2024 and how we’re ready to take family engagement even further in 2025. What sums up CAFE in 2024? We fostered meaningful -
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At CAFE we believe in the power of families, schools, and communities working together. As the Statewide Family Engagement Center for Maryland and Pennsylvania, CAFE hosts the State Advisory Committee and its Family Leadership Subcommittee (formerly IFLEC), where parent leaders connect and create resources that empower and strengthen educational partnerships. Sandra, a passionate family -
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The U.S. Department of Education has announced that MAEC will lead the Statewide Family Engagement Center (SFEC) in Maryland and Pennsylvania. This is an exciting new iteration of MAEC’s program, the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement (CAFE). This grant will enable MAEC to expand the work it began nearly five years ago. MAEC President -
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In summer 2021, the CAFE team partnered with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) family leader to develop and disseminate a survey to learn about AAPI families’ reflections and thoughts on school reopening in fall 2021. The survey, translated into Chinese, Korean, and Urdu, resulted in nearly 500 responses from over 20 states. When asked what -
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CAFE’s Technology Equity and Access (CAFE TEA) committee is composed of MD Advisory Council members representing concerned leaders from public and private schools, state and local library systems, and school parent associations. Their goals are to help families connect to technology, hardware, and software by removing barriers to equitable access; and to empower parents, -
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It’s that time of year when almost every educator I talk to is feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and just plain unsettled. Back-to-school always brings mixed emotions, but this year’s back-to-school is especially uncertain. The “normal” we were once holding onto is a distant memory. How can we push forward and continue to take care of -
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Each month, families from the Maryland and Pennsylvania advisory councils provide tips and strategies on questions submitted by families across the two states. Their responses to this month’s questions are below. If you have a question you would like answered, please fill out this survey and it will be considered for our next newsletter. -
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Each month, families from the Maryland and Pennsylvania advisory councils provide tips and strategies on questions submitted by families across the two states. Their responses to this month’s questions are below: If you have a question you would like answered, please fill out this questionnaire and it will be considered for our next newsletter. Each month, -
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The Maryland and Pennsylvania Statewide Family Engagement Center, Collaborative Action for Family Engagement (CAFE), has launched a Family/Parent Leadership Community of Practice (CoP). The goal of the CoP is to create a user-friendly Leadership Guide for educators to build parents’ and family members’ capacity to serve as leaders in their sphere of influence, whether -
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The National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) published a major report: Catalyzing Family, School, and Community Partnerships: A Review of the Work of the Statewide Family Engagement Centers. This report explores the vital work that the twelve Statewide Family Engagement Centers (including CAFE) are doing to strengthen connections between home, school, -
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Each month, families from the Maryland and Pennsylvania advisory councils provide tips and strategies on questions submitted by families across the two states. Their responses to this month’s questions are below: If you have a question you would like answered, please fill out this questionnaire and it will be considered for our next newsletter. Each month, -
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Each month, families from the Maryland and Pennsylvania advisory councils provide tips and strategies on questions submitted by families across the two states. Their responses to this month’s questions are below: Each month, families from the Maryland and Pennsylvania advisory councils provide tips and strategies on questions submitted by families across the two states. -
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