The goal of all schools is providing optimum education for every student, yet across the United States that goal is reportedly not met. Parental involvement and engagement are the key explanatory factors in students' academic success, as shown in multiple research projects. However, few researchers have emphasized or developed guidelines on how to include parents or guardians in the educational process or how to overcome related barriers. This phenomenological study involved searching for the barriers restricting parent engagement and finding some of the elements needed for parents and guardians to become part of the education process. Parent and educator perceptions were recorded based on their lived experiences regarding diverse demographics of ethnicity, education, and socioeconomic levels four research questions relating to those issues regarding school participation. Teachers, administrators, and parents at two elementary schools located on geographically opposite sides of a large northern California school district participated in interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups for a triangulation of multiple methods and sources of data collection to strengthen the study. The responses of the participants' lived experiences were organized by questions to search for themes and analyzed through an inductive process to report acquired data. Lexical searching of key words and common phrases in the data provided the organization and structure for inductive analysis for a clear picture of the phenomenon under study. Detailed descriptions from the participants provided a picture of attitudes and perspectives. The findings revealed that most parents do want involvement and engagement with the schools, but home-school trust must be established first. Many of the researchers in the Literature Review stated that socioeconomic status was a determiner in parents' desire to participate in their children's schools. Surprisingly, the parents and educators disagreed with this assumption from the researchers, but they did acquiesce that socioeconomics were often the result of poor education which might influence parents' poor self-efficacy. The garnered information from this study may aid school personnel in developing programs for incorporating parents in the education process. Recommendations for practice were supplied for actions schools can presently take to promote parent engagement, build collaboration, and trust, and recommendations for future research was provided referencing the areas of need which would enhance and expand the information garnered from this study.