Parent Volunteers and COVID-19: Balancing Necessity, Enthusiasm, and Caution

The focus issue addressed in this Capstone Project is how the pandemic disrupted parent volunteering in schools. Parent volunteering is an essential issue for schools because parent involvement is essential for student success. An evidence-based argument is offered that schools struggled to staff the void left by parent volunteers. The three primary stakeholder perspectives chosen were parents, school leadership, and teachers. Parents make up the volunteer pool; teachers know what kind of assistance classrooms need, and school leadership creates policies. Three themes emerged from analyzing the data and explored ways to reintroduce parents to a school campus. Parent volunteers make in-class activities easier; parents want to feel engaged with their child’s school, but school coronavirus policies limit access to the school. Balancing necessity, enthusiasm, and caution are argued to be the most effective way to achieve a school’s parent involvement goals