Abstract
Parental engagement is one of the important factors in improving the quality of basic education, especially in Indonesian schools abroad that face different social, cultural, and geographical challenges. Positively, various Indonesian elementary schools in Jeddah and Makkah showed progress in building collaboration between schools and parents through digital communication programs, parenting activities, and strengthening inclusive school culture. Adaptive and transformative leadership of school principals also encourages the creation of a wider space for parents to participate in the child's education process. However, factually there are still a number of obstacles, such as the limited time of parents who mostly work in the informal and formal sectors with long working hours, differences in the socio-cultural backgrounds of diaspora families, and the lack of optimal school managerial strategies in systematically integrating parental involvement in educational programs. This condition shows that there is a gap between the expected parental involvement practices in modern education management and the reality of implementation in Indonesian elementary schools abroad. Based on these gaps, this study formulates two main questions: (1) how the practice of transformative adaptive leadership of school principals in strengthening parental engagement in Indonesian elementary schools in Jeddah and Makkah; and (2) how the implications of leadership are on the effectiveness of education management in schools. This study uses a qualitative approach with a case study design through in-depth interview techniques, participatory observation, and institutional document analysis. The results of the study show that the adaptive-transformative leadership of school principals plays a significant role in building a collaborative ecosystem between schools and parents through participatory communication strategies, innovation of parenting programs based on the diaspora community, and the use of digital technology to strengthen family-school educational interactions. This leadership model has been proven to be able to increase trust, participation, and shared responsibility between schools and parents in supporting the success of students' education.