During a check-in call with a member of the Families Empowered call center team, a Houston mother broke down in tears.

It was the first time in the four years that her son has been on a charter school wait list that anybody had tried to help her family find a school where her son could thrive.

I think this story speaks to the enormity of the challenge in Texas, where tens of thousands of parents are searching for the right schools for their children. They usually search on their own without the information or support they need to find that best-fit school.

Currently, about 250,000 students attend 630 public charter schools in Texas. An additional 130,000 children are on charter school wait lists. Often, parents struggle to navigate the complex application processes, deadlines and bureaucratic mazes that stand between their children and the education that they need and deserve.

Families Empowered — the organization that I am proud to have founded and am privileged to lead — is working to solve this problem. We help families explore all of their options — including public charter schools, traditional public schools and private schools — because every family in every city has the right to choose a school that best serves their children’s needs.

In 2009, with support from the Walton Family Foundation, we analyzed the scope of the challenges facing families in Houston as they worked to find schools for their kids.

Through surveys and research, we learned three lessons:

• Parents want to find the “best-fit school” for their children.
• Parents primarily learn about school options through their social and family networks.
• Parents don’t know the rules of the game; They don’t know where to apply, how to apply or the timeline for applying.

We determined that parents needed a trusted source where they could gather information from a neutral, sector-agnostic third party. We created Families Empowered to fill that need.
In the past seven years, we have created multiple outreach channels to meet parents based on their needs. We have leveraged data and technology to create an online informational platform, where families find resources and can explore the diverse school options available to them. We created a call center from the ground up, staffed by KIPP, YES Prep and Harmony Public School alumni – all recent college graduates or current college students – who answer parents’ questions and guide them through the process of finding the right school for their child.

We also host School Connection Fairs to help families explore opportunities in person. Throughout the year, we communicate with our families by email, postal mail, and robo-calls keeping them informed about not-to-miss deadlines, useful resources, and direct links to school applications. We’re making the school search process as easy and accessible for them as possible.

Throughout this work, we do not press families to consider a particular school or type of school. Rather, we try to empower families with accurate, actionable information so that they better understand all of their options — including public charter schools, local district schools, and private schools.

So far, we’ve helped more than 32,000 families in Houston and San Antonio, and we’re planning our expansion to Dallas and Austin.

And our movement is growing: we’ve hosted bi-partisan rallies to press for greater school choice in Texas and beyond. Already our events are bringing together people from different backgrounds and points of view, including Senator Ted Cruz and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. We have been able to do this because we’re uniting people around a truth: that all children deserve the best possible education.

Picking a school is an important, complex and often emotional decision. We’re honored to be a part of the process of choosing the best-fit school for so many Texas families.