By Jake Hornstein & Greg Hill, Our Children Have Rights
When parents engage in their child’s education, outcomes improve. This includes student achievement, teacher-student relationships, and even school environment. Staying engaged with the child’s education can be hard. For co-parents, it can be even more challenging.
Effective co-parenting requires communication and collaboration. When it comes to the child’s education, working together and staying in sync is crucial. Co-parent engagement in all aspects of education sets the foundation for the child’s future. It can also have implications on the parent’s future.
While Florida doesn’t require parents to pay for post-secondary education, many plan to, leaving co-parents worried for years about what it will cost. With high tuition, costs of living, and other expenses, the uncertainty of paying for college or vocational school can make co-parenting even more difficult.
Open communication and collaboration with a co-parent can be hard to maintain. Most likely, there’s a history of breakup, divorce or disappointment one way or the other. Co-parents often need an extra incentive to maintain teamwork or start collaborating in the first place.
Two factors, when combined, have shown to be key ingredients for sustained co-parent engagement with the child’s education, or the incentive that ignites it… 1) A shared S.M.A.R.T. Goal and 2) Finances. Co-parents of teenagers can find this in The Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program (BFS). Funded by The Florida Lottery, a BFS rewards high school graduates for academic achievement with multiple scholarship options.
Financial Incentive: A BFS can significantly reduce the cost of higher education.
Co-Parents: Family structure is not in the criteria. Co-parents are incentivized to help their child pursue a scholarship.
Long-Term Shared Goal: Students can start preparing early, ideally by the end of sophomore year. This creates a longer timeline for co-parents to stay engaged on requirements like GPA, test scores, and service hours.
A shared goal that can be easily tracked is crucial. This adds the element of sharing information on school performance, a common cause for major disputes when not shared. Florida families have saved thousands. ROI generally goes together with risk. If the risk is co-parents staying collaboratively engaged in their child’s education, it’s a good investment. Teenagers take note of co-parents working as a team. It’s a great opportunity to set an example. More importantly, the child will be better positioned to reach educational goals.
Program information is readily available, and the Lottery has district offices throughout the state. You can learn more about the program by visiting floridalottery.com.
Our Children Have Rights is a 501c3 Pinellas-based nonprofit that serves children by helping parents with child custody & co-parenting, at no cost to the family. We’re on a mission… A mission to protect the rights of children to have access to their parents by providing education, resources, and support services for successful co-parenting strategies. Why? Because Our Children Have Rights. Contact Jake at info@ourchildrenhaverights.com OR visit www.ochr.org.