# Reimagining How Schools Talk to Families: Using Communication, Connection, and Care *This blog post features Cohort 16 SDP Fellow alumna Yuzhu Xia and her work in Boston Public Schools as a 2026 SDP Award Runner-Ups* August 27, 2026 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) ![Yuzhu](/sites/g/files/omnuum4446/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-08/Xia%2C%20Yuzhu%20C16.jpg?itok=PC_vWbaE) Every once in a while, a project comes along that is deceptively simple in its premise but profound in its ambition. For Yuzhu Xia, Cohort 16 Fellow of the Strategic Data Project (SDP) and Evaluation and Data Manager at Boston Public Schools' (BPS) Department of Early Childhood, that project started with a question most people overlook: What does a family actually receive when their child comes home from pre-K? The answer was complicated, and that complication mattered more than anyone had fully reckoned with. We are thrilled to celebrate Yuzhu Xia and Boston Public Schools as runner-ups for the SDP Award, recognizing their extraordinary work on the School Readiness Report Card project: a multi-year, cross-departmental effort to transform how Boston's earliest learners and their families experience communication, connection, and care. **The Problem** ***Behind*** **the Problem** Boston's early childhood landscape is rich but fragmented. Families navigating pre-K may find their child enrolled in a BPS classroom, a community-based organization (CBO), an independent school, or a family childcare program, each operating with its own tools, formats, and timelines. For families, especially multilingual families already bridging cultural and linguistic gaps, this inconsistency creates confusion at exactly the moment when clarity matters most. The report card sitting at the center of this problem was never really designed to be a communication tool. For most of its existence, it functioned primarily as a compliance form: a document teachers were required to complete and submit to satisfy district and state reporting requirements, tracking whether students met developmental benchmarks across content areas like literacy, math, and social-emotional growth. Families received it, typically at set intervals throughout the year, but the format and language were built with administrative accountability in mind, not necessarily with an eye toward helping a parent understand their child's growth or feel equipped to support learning at home. Yuzhu and her team set out to change that. **Starting With Alignment, Not Answers** Rather than diving straight into redesign, Yuzhu's team made a critical early decision: build trust first. They convened a working group, surfaced the history of the tool, and established shared principles before sketching any new format. They acknowledged openly that some stakeholders had felt excluded from past revision efforts and that trust had to be earned, not assumed. From there, the team mapped an intentional sequence: internal alignment, structured feedback from educators across BPS and CBOs, family surveys, cross-departmental input, and only then co-design sessions with educators and families as true partners. This sequencing was a strategic commitment to making the process itself a vehicle for culture change, long before any new report card reached a family's hands. **A Layered, Equity-Centered Data Strategy** What sets this project apart is the depth and intentionality of its data approach and stakeholder engagement. The team drew on six distinct data streams, including direct assessment data from the Research-based Early Math Assessment (REMA), educator and family surveys, focus groups, working group feedback, and cross-departmental contributions from the Office of Data & Accountability (ODA), the Office of Instructional & Information Technology (OIIT), and city-level partners like the Boston Office of Early Childhood and the Boston Opportunity Agenda. This wasn't a survey sent to a few classrooms. It was a multi-modal strategy grounded in the belief that tools touching thousands of families deserve to be built with those families — not just for them. **Real Impact, With More to Come** Since the 2023–2024 school year, the project has piloted in 6–7 classrooms annually, serving over 100 four-year-olds per year across BPS and CBO settings. Now entering its third year, the work has required coordination across every early childhood content area team as well as multiple district offices — ensuring the revised tool is instructionally coherent, technically feasible, and ready for scale. And scale it will. Once fully implemented, the revised report card is projected to reach over 13,000 children citywide across all Pre-K through 2nd grade classrooms. But perhaps the most meaningful impact is already visible — not in a database, but in the words of educators, families, and city partners who have said something rarely heard about redesign efforts: "This is the first time we've felt genuinely engaged." **A Model Worth Replicating** Yuzhu and her team have been deliberate about creating something transferable. The combination of multi-modal data collection, intentional stakeholder sequencing, and co-design methodology offers a replicable framework for any district seeking to align tools across fragmented systems, center equity, and strengthen family trust in the early years. As Yuzhu puts it: "Other cities struggling with fragmented pre-K systems can look to this as a model for how to align tools, center equity, and streamline family experience." **Congratulations, Yuzhu and Boston Public Schools** Yuzhu Xia and the BPS Department of Early Childhood embody what the SDP Award represents — work that is analytically rigorous and deeply human. Their School Readiness Report Card project is proof that the smallest tools can be the entry point for transforming how systems relate to the families they serve. Congratulations on this well-deserved recognition. The work you're doing in Boston is already changing the early childhood landscape — and the ripple effects are only beginning. 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