MCOE Education Spotlight: Registration open for Merced County Parent Institute

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- In ABC30's segment, Education Spotlight, Action News Anchor Landon Burke will talk with Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) officials about some of the biggest topics in education.

Registration for the Merced County Parent Institute is now open!

Landon Burke learned how North Valley families could get the tools to succeed in school and beyond.

Landon: Tell me what is new with the Merced County Parent Institute.

Monica: What's new about Merced County Parent Institute this year is that it will be a hybrid event. In the past few years, we have actually had an in-person event that was co-hosted with Golden Valley High School. And this year, we will actually be having a virtual and in-person event, so it's hybrid. We're really excited about it, hoping that we can reach more families in our community to attend. So it's important to know too that these events will be hosted in both English and Spanish so that we're capturing all the languages in our community.

Landon: So tell me a little bit about the subject matter being covered.

Monica: So this year's theme is 'resiliency and what you do matters,' and so it's just really appropriate for the times, considering all that our nation has been through. And so when you really think about 'how do we get our children to understand the resiliency is what's going to get us through this?' It's really relevant to what's going on in our community and just being able to show parents and caregivers and anybody who affects a child's life, showing them that resiliency means that you get back up and you keep going, and that's what success is about. This is really one of those community events that's going to bring that topic to light and really have families be able to kind of go with that and say, "Okay, we're bouncing back. We're moving on, and we're going to be successful."

Landon: So I understand that you guys are offering something for the younger demographic. Could you tell me a little bit about this 'youth strand?'

Monica: Yes. So a couple of years ago, when we started this, we realized that we have youth out there looking for some sort of tool, something to help them navigate going into becoming young adults. This youth strategy is it's focused on children from ages 13 to 18. And it's really going to be about providing them with the tools that they need for higher education readiness, or potentially other career paths, and just kind of really showing them the way of how to navigate what the higher education system looks like.

Landon: Very good. Well, Monica, is there anything else that people need to know if they're interested?

Monica: I think that parents and caregivers who would be attending need to know that having this hybrid option really gives them the opportunity to stay at home, you know, especially if you have younger children and it's an event that they would like to attend, but they're not able to present that. This is really going to give them the opportunity to do that, having access to different topics that are very relevant to things that parents and caregivers need to navigate, such as taking care of children. So there'll be different things like disaster preparedness, self-care, and, again, college readiness. Not only do the children need to know how to do it, but the parents need to know how to get them there as well. So lots of relevant topics.

Registration is now open. Click here to register for the event.