Leveraging Data to Foster Family Engagement

This Q&A is part of an SDP Blog series profiling members of the SDP Fellowship Cohort 15. All posts from this series may be found here.

Q&A with Erika Larsen & Gabrielle Friedman at Passaic Public Schools, a Cohort 15 SDP Fellowship Partner Agency

Erika Larsen is a Cohort 15 (2023-2025) SDP Fellow and a Data Specialist at Passaic Public Schools, a public school district in Passaic, New Jersey, serving 12,000+ students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. We recently caught up with Erika and her supervisor Gabrielle Friedman, a Cohort 10 SDP Fellow alumna and the Passaic Public Schools Supervisor of Data Analytics and Interoperability, to learn more about their exciting and impactful work.

Erika, can you tell us about your role at Passaic Public Schools?

Erika: I use data to strengthen family engagement in our district. My work involves making data accessible and actionable for district leaders and helping them use insights to drive decision-making. My goal is to help district leaders move beyond surface-level observations to understand the deeper dynamics affecting student and family experiences.

Tell us more about your capstone project.

Erika: I've been working to better understand the challenges parents face when trying to engage with their children's education. Through my capstone research, we are learning that family engagement is much more complex than simply tracking workshop attendance. It's about creating a genuine partnership between families and schools that starts by listening to and understanding each family's unique circumstances.

While digging into the data, I discovered something that really struck our team: Passaic has one of the highest populations of food insecure people in the entire state of New Jersey. This was a reminder of how the daily challenges families in our community face can directly impact educational participation. We realized that before we could talk about educational engagement, we had to address some fundamental needs.

In response to the food insecurity data, we launched a collaboration with the Community Food Bank of NJ and are distributing boxes with 20 pounds of food to our district's under-resourced families twice per month.  

What impact do you hope to see as a result of the capstone project when it is completed?

Erika: I hope this project creates a meaningful and lasting impact for the district’s high need, hard-to-reach families. In just two months, our partnership with the food bank has provided 10,000 meals to families facing food insecurity, supporting more than 700 children. Each food distribution creates a regular touchpoint with the school and provides an opportunity for meaningful engagement. For example, some parents who come in for food have used their time at the school to inquire about academy applications and parent portal accounts.

At its core, this initiative is about building trust and reducing barriers to engagement. By addressing fundamental needs, I hope we can create opportunities for deeper, more authentic partnerships between families and the district.

Gabrielle: I hope to see a significant uptick in parent engagement as a result of Erika’s capstone project. By fostering stronger connections with parents, her project aims to help Passaic Public Schools better serve the needs of the community and address barriers that may currently hinder parental involvement. Understanding why parents may not be engaged is a critical step, and this project offers innovative approaches to uncovering these challenges and addressing them effectively. Ultimately, increased parent engagement is a proven pathway to better student outcomes, including higher academic achievement, improved attendance, and enhanced overall well-being. This project has the potential to provide valuable insights and strategies that could be scaled or adapted to benefit similar communities.

What has been the most meaningful experience from your participation in the SDP Fellowship so far?

Erika: A highlight for me has been the training we received from SDP on root cause analysis. It has been transformative to think about addressing root causes instead of surface-level symptoms, as it enables more targeted and lasting solutions to complex challenges. Beyond developing my technical skills through SDP, I’ve truly valued collaborating and learning from my talented and diverse cohort. Their kindness, dedication, and innovative work continually inspires me!

What excites you the most about your job?

Erika: What excites me most about my role is transforming data into actionable insights that drive real change for people. Having empathy while telling stories with data is crucial, because each datapoint represents a person’s story or experience. I’m motivated every day by the opportunity to use data to shape policies and make a positive difference for people in our community.

How has the SDP Fellowship strengthened the analytic capacity of your agency?

Gabrielle: By partnering with SDP, we had the opportunity to hire one of SDP’s high-quality candidates, pre-screened to meet the caliber of the fellowship and identified as suitable matches to our district's needs. Having Erika on our team in the role of SDP Fellow has been a game-changer for us. Her experience working with food-insecure populations brought a unique perspective that helped us see our lack of parent engagement through a different lens. Erika’s positive attitude and willingness to collaborate have made her an invaluable asset to our school community. Her strong research and analytical background provided the foundation we needed to move the project forward, and her talent for data storytelling—whether through dashboards, presentations, or stakeholder meetings—has been exactly what we needed to communicate insights effectively across the board. Erika’s fresh ideas and creative approaches have given us new ways to address a problem that has persisted for years. Her access to the wider SDP network and her contributions as a fellow have opened doors to strategies we hadn’t considered before, making a real impact on how we serve our community.