About Us
CPLAN (Collaborative Parent Leadership Advocacy Network) is a parent-led nonprofit organization working to strengthen family-school partnerships and advance educational equity across Massachusetts.
Mission
CPLAN strengthens family-school partnerships by building the trust, knowledge, confidence, relationships, and leadership needed to advance educational equity and improve student outcomes.
Vision
A future where families, educators, and communities work together with shared purpose and responsibility to ensure every student is known, valued, supported, and equipped to thrive in school and in life.
Our
Story
Building the capacity for families and schools to lead together.
Founded in Boston in 2016 by Julia Mejia alongside a diverse group of mothers, CPLAN emerged from a shared experience: navigating an education system that too often left families without the knowledge, relationships, or meaningful opportunities needed to influence their children’s educational experiences. Despite differences in culture, language, immigration status, education, and income, these mothers recognized a common need, not simply to be included in school conversations, but to help shape the decisions and systems affecting their children.
That conviction continues to guide our work today.
CPLAN builds the capacity of families and schools to move beyond traditional approaches to family engagement and toward authentic partnerships grounded in shared learning, mutual respect, and shared responsibility. We equip parents to become informed, confident leaders while helping educators and school communities recognize and engage the knowledge, strengths, and experiences families bring.
Through leadership development, professional learning, and collaborative family-school initiatives, we help communities build the relationships and structures needed for families and educators to work together in shaping more equitable, responsive, and supportive learning environments.
We believe families should not simply be invited into systems. They should have a meaningful role in shaping them. When families and educators bring their knowledge, perspectives, and leadership together around shared goals, they strengthen the conditions in which every student can thrive.
Because lasting educational change happens when the people closest to students have the capacity and opportunity to shape the systems that serve them.
Why We Must Work Together to Reimagine Education
Education is not just what happens in the classroom, it’s a community effort. Yet teachers, families, and students each face barriers that make it difficult to reach our shared goal: helping every child thrive.
Teachers Face:
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Overwhelming workloads and limited resources that leave little time for creativity or relationship-building.
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Burnout from constantly having to balance academic expectations, behavioral challenges, and social-emotional needs.
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Systemic pressures such as standardized testing and rigid policies that often conflict with what they know their students truly need.
Families Face:
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Barriers to access, including language differences, work schedules, transportation, and limited childcare.
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A lack of trust or belonging within schools, where families sometimes feel unheard or dismissed.
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Complex systems that are hard to navigate, leaving parents unsure how to best support their children.
Students Face:
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Academic inequities, with many not reading or performing at grade level.
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Behavioral and social pressures, including bullying, vaping, and increased conflict on school grounds.
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Mental health struggles, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, often compounded by a lack of supportive resources.
The Path Forward
Reimagining education requires all of us (educators, families, and students) to come together as partners. By listening to one another, sharing responsibility, and designing practices that value every voice, we can build a system that nurtures the whole child and strengthens the entire community.
Together, we can transform schools into spaces where everyone feels seen, supported, and empowered to succeed.
Core Beliefs
Relationships
Build Power
Trust & collaboration between families, educators, and communities are the foundation for lasting change in schools.
We create space for honest dialogue through community forums, school site councils, and partnerships built on trust;
Not tokenism.
Wellness Is Essential for Learning
Emotional safety and belonging are foundational for academic success.
Learn how we support wellness in schools→
Our Reshaping Community Wellness Initiative helps families and schools understand how healing, emotional intelligence, and mental health shape learning and school climate.
Parents Are
Leaders
Parents bring expertise, lived experience, and leadership to education. It is essential that they co-lead with schools to build a learning environment that fosters a sense of identity, safety, and belonging with purpose and direction.
We support parents with multilingual workshops, coaching, and leadership opportunities so they can step into decision-making spaces with confidence.
Decision-Making Should Be Shared
Family and community voice should guide school policies, ensuring they shape the systems their children depend on.
We support families to lead and participate in School Site Councils, advisory boards, and hiring committees, ensuring decisions are made with, not for, the community.
Our History
2016
The Collaborative Parent Leadership Advocacy Network (CPLAN) is a nonprofit organization and statewide coalition committed to empowering parent leaders in education across Massachusetts. Grounded in principles of educational equity and mental health awareness, we endeavor to cultivate an inclusive, informed, and collaborative educational environment that uplifts students, families, and the broader school community.
CPLAN began by empowering parents to advocate for their children. Through our work, we recognized that families and educators often share the same goal, but face significant barriers, including limited resources, insufficient support, and growing expectations. We evolved our approach to strengthen not only parent leadership, but also the capacity of families and schools to work together as partners. Today, we help bridge that gap by building the knowledge, relationships, and shared responsibility needed to create more equitable learning experiences for every student.
