Great Expectations

When Lorenzo Bradshaw took over this past summer as the new principal at Campus Elementary, his first priority was to recruit parents to help him tackle the challenges of educating students in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Grand Rapids, Mich. Teachers said he couldn’t do it, telling Bradshaw that their parent involvement efforts had never worked.
Undeterred, Bradshaw invited parents to meet-and-greets at the school. He made himself available for nine hours over three days in early August. “I had the cookies and the juice and the cool water set out,” he says, “and for three days the cookies remained untouched, the water remained plentiful, and the juice remained cold. The parents never showed up.”