Rachel Brice named interim executive director of Parent Teacher Home Visits

Parent Teacher Home Visits named Program Director Rachel Brice as interim executive director effective today, replacing Andrea Prejean, who will move into a strategic advisory role through January 2027. The leadership change comes as the organization expands its home-visit model for schools and districts nationwide.

Why it matters: - Parent Teacher Home Visits is moving into a new leadership phase while it continues scaling a model used in 700+ schools across 32 states and Washington, D.C. - The transition comes as the organization keeps pushing teacher-family partnership work that its national evaluations link to lower chronic absenteeism and stronger reading and math outcomes. - Brice’s appointment keeps day-to-day leadership with someone who has already led PTHV’s training and district support work for five years.

What happened: - The Parent Teacher Home Visits board named Rachel Brice interim executive director, effective today. - Brice has served as the organization’s Program Director since 2021. - Andrea Prejean is stepping down from the executive director role and will move into a strategic advisory position through January 2027. - Shital C. Shah, PTHV board chair, said Brice brings strategic clarity, operational rigor, and field credibility to the role.

The details: - Brice has more than 25 years of experience across public education and social services. - At PTHV, Brice led the multiyear redesign of the organization’s signature training. - Brice certified the national trainer corps to deliver the updated curriculum and built continuing professional education for PTHV trainers. - Brice also designed the support system that helps districts move from first training to sustained practice through readiness planning, coaching for district leads, and implementation tracking tools. - PTHV says Brice helps represent the organization in coalitions and partnerships including S-TAC, California’s statewide hub for the California Community Schools Partnership Program, and the California Family Engagement Network. - Those partnerships extend PTHV’s reach into state and national conversations about school-family engagement. - Before PTHV, Brice oversaw community schools implementation for Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa, Florida. - In Hillsborough County, she expanded the strategy from two sites to eight in two years and brought PTHV training to about 80 educators across three additional schools. - Brice previously secured more than $10 million in grants and research funding for student-outcome projects while serving as a grants and research coordinator for the district. - Her earlier roles include executive director of the Sylvia Thomas Center for Adoptive and Foster Families, middle school mathematics teacher, school social worker, and Title VI program coordinator. - Brice holds a master’s degree in social work, with a concentration in policy and administration, from Florida State University. - In her remarks, Brice said the role requires stewardship of strategic partnerships and ensuring the team has the resources and roadmap to train teachers to partner effectively with families. - Brice said families hold expertise about their own children and that schools build better results when they use that expertise.

Between the lines: - The board’s choice signals continuity over disruption, since Brice already shaped core parts of PTHV’s training and support infrastructure. - Prejean’s advisory role suggests the organization wants to keep external partnership work moving while the transition settles. - PTHV is leaning on a leader with both classroom and systems-level experience, which fits an organization focused on implementation inside school districts.

What's next: - Prejean will focus on identifying and advancing partnerships and other opportunities to strengthen PTHV’s mission through January 2027. - Brice is expected to guide the organization’s training, district support, and partnership work in the interim. - PTHV will continue promoting its home-visit model, which it says has involved more than 61,000 trained educators and more than 433,633 relational home visits since 1998. - The organization also points to a 21% reduction in chronic absenteeism and higher odds of proficiency in reading and math as outcomes from national evaluations.

The bottom line: - PTHV is betting on an internal successor with deep program experience to keep its family-engagement strategy on track during a planned leadership transition.