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Fairfax County Public Schools

Client
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is one of the nation's most diverse school systems, with students from more than 40 different language groups and ethnicities.

Challenge
The FCPS Minority Parents Oversight Committee needed a manual to help minority parents—who speak several different languages—engage with the school system to help their children succeed, but after attempting to create a "report by committee" they realized they needed professional editing and design to produce an effective publication that their audiences would use.

Enter Reingold
Reingold transformed the parents' handbook into a valuable tool to guide parents in advocating for their children from kindergarten through high school. We created an appealing design, including inserts for English-speaking families and the same material in Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese. Working with school staff and parents, we prepared and organized the information they need on standardized tests, special curricula, regional colleges, and other options—wrapped in a package that's easy to keep and use.

Results
The Fairfax County School Board praised the handbook's usability and sharp looks, tripled the print order, and urged the Minority Student Achievement Program to give the book the widest possible distribution. In 2007, FCPS enlisted Reingold to update the handbook, and a year later we created a toolkit for the school system's parent liaisons as well.