Abstract
Based on expectations and behaviors associated with White, middle-, and upper-class families, U.S. educational institutions continue to frame racially minoritized families as inferior beings and as the causes for their children's educational challenges. Latinx families can be positioned in deficit ways even in dual language bilingual education programs (DLBE), often lauded for being culturally and linguistically expansive settings. Informed by Critical Race Theory in Education and LatCrit, this study presents counter-stories of two Latina immigrant mothers supporting their children's learning and development during the COVID-19 pandemic in states with anti-bilingual and anti-immigrant legislative histories, Arizona and Massachusetts. Although the mothers were positioned as " engaged/involved " parents by the DLBE programs, their forms of care and support went beyond school-led behaviors associated with such labels. Leveraging community cultural wealth, the mothers shared a deep commitment to sustaining their children's bilingual and bicultural development and wellness. At the same time, they problematized static and constrained forms of engagement efforts during pandemic schooling and learning. As such, their counter-stories trouble deficit conceptualizations and false dichotomies within family-bilingual school relations and serve as a cautionary tale for educational programs framed as supportive of linguistic and cultural pluralism. We argue for the continued interrogation and reconfiguration of school-led forms of engagement to ensure that racially minoritized families engage in shared leadership and school governance and have their knowledge forms and language traditions elevated as crucial levers for catalyzing transformative learning in response to COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts.