The committee meets on a bi-monthly basis and makes decisions on the school's discretionary budget, school policies and activities, relationships with the community, and strategies for involving parents and community members as partners in the school. Horace Mann's Community Council, the school's advisory body, includes parents, teachers, and students. It meets monthly to decide how to spend grant money and other supplemental funds and to deal with school governance issues. The Council sets school policies, hires and evaluates the principal, and is involved in interviewing teachers. The council controls both the discretionary and categorical budgets and makes decisions on the way categorical programs such as Title I are implemented.
Parent involvement is a two-way street.
Educators know that the involvement and support of parents is crucial for their children's success in school. But schools often have difficulty in drawing in and communicating with the parents of their LEP students. At the schools studied in this project, access for LEP parents is considered nearly as important as access for students. Bilingual staff and translators provide avenues for parents to participate, even if they do not speak English. In this way, these schools receive the benefit of assistance from all sectors of the parent population.