As they adopt and adapt emerging approaches, K-12 leaders have a tremendous opportunity to activate the latent social capital within families to improve students' experiences and outcomes. Whether they succeed depends on where and how schools activate family networks, and for what purposes. This paper details five emerging opportunities for leaders to explore: (1) leveraging technology tools to foster connections and build trust with families can dramatically improve the quality of partnership between families and schools; (2) designing family engagement efforts that support families alongside students can deliver long-term social capital gains for students; (3) enlisting families as partners within students' learning ecosystems can open up access to extracurricular, postsecondary, and career pathways that can be difficult to achieve otherwise, particularly for under-resourced students; (4) connecting families to one another can create more accessible; and affordable, and flexible options for scaling student support; and (5) integrating metrics to gauge the quality of family-school interactions within existing data dashboards can be a game-changer for driving student success. The innovative tools and models highlighted in this paper reflect the fact that it's networks--not just grades and degrees--that are needed to ensure students' wellbeing, academic growth, and expanded career options. As part of these networks, families are an inherent and requisite resource for schools committed to meeting the complex needs of present and future generations in a rapidly changing world.