About us

Parents for Student Success (PFSS) exists to support parents of school age children in ways that provide them with the information and skills needed to effectively manage their child’s K – 12 education. 

In 1987, neighbors Dr. Ellie Graham, M.D. and Dawn Mason, M.A. Ed, came together around their concern for children who were failing in South end Seattle schools. Dr. Graham, a pediatrician specializes in the medical care of children living in poverty and Mason is an advocate for the same population of children and parents. 

Together they developed the concept of teaching parents how to advocate for better education experiences for their children. Dr. Graham felt that parents were able to communicate with her and the nurses about health issues, and where they could not most were motivated to learn ways to keep their children healthy. She believed they could likewise learn to communicate with teachers. Dawn Mason had an experience with the schools involving her own daughter that led her removing her daughter from public school and placing her in a private school. However, she worried about her daughter’s classmates whose parents who did not have the same privilege of making this kind of education choice. 

Changing the focus of parent involvement from building based volunteering to applied strategies used with their child and in ways to communicate with teachers has been the basis of Parents for Student Success. Parents learn management techniques, coaching and project management principles as well as new ways of communicating with their child and those who are engaged with their children. What Graham and Mason learned in doing this work with parents led Dr. Graham to get a Masters in Public Health and Mason to become a Washington Legislator and to get a Masters in Education. 

Parents for Student Success received the Seattle Foundation President’s award for innovative effectiveness for their trainings that gives parents the tools they need to be better equipped to manage the K-12 experiences of their children. 

Past Parent to Parent seminar series include; Positive Home to School Communication, Home Supported Learning and Its Your Team, You are the Coach. The seminars give parents hands on experiences, based on the observation that most things we know we learned from experience not just theory. It is the experiences garnered from hundreds of parents of successful students that PFSS teaches parents of children failing to succeed in school.