Educators Stress Need for Involvement : Schools Do Homework to Entice Parents Back to Campus

Rosa Martinez, Sondra Davis and Debbie Gendel are, by all accounts, concerned and committed parents. None, however, is involved in activities at her children’s school.

“My status as a resident of this country could be questioned,” explained Martinez, a Pacoima mother of five who said she fears she “might get into trouble if someone at the school called authorities.” (Rosa is not her real first name.)

Davis, a South Los Angeles single mother of three, said: “I make sure my kids do their homework. And, if they get into any trouble, I will go over to the school.” But she doesn’t want to “get involved in that other stuff.”

Gendel, a working mother who commutes from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley each day, said she “could never be involved in PTA because they always had their meetings at 11 a.m. I can’t understand why they can’t have the meetings at night or on the weekends.”

National Pattern

The three mothers are typical of a national pattern of lukewarm parental participation that has forced schools to develop innovative methods to entice parents back to campus. Getting parents involved is important, educators say, because education cannot be successful without family support and participation.

Officials attribute the drop in involvement to a variety of trends over which schools have no control.

These include:

The growing number of working mothers, such as Gendel, who do not have time to attend PTA meetings or volunteer as aides during the school day. Traditionally, mothers rather than fathers have been involved in school support activities.

A huge increase in the number of immigrants with children attending public schools. Some, such as Martinez, are here illegally and fear being deported if they are too visible. Others, teachers and principals say, come from countries where parents traditionally leave all education decisions to school authorities. Still others are simply intimidated by schools and the institutions they represent.

“Anytime you come up to an institution it’s awesome,” said Jean Todaro, principal of Victory Elementary School in North Hollywood, a predominantly minority school that no longer has an active Parent-Teacher Assn. “But, if you are a parent who did not have much formal education or come from a background that dictates that you never question authority, then becoming part of a school situation may be even more difficult.”

So-called “white flight” from public schools during court-ordered busing in school districts across the nation. That caused a sharp drop in school support-group memberships.

In the San Fernando Valley, hard hit by white flight during mandatory busing from 1979 to 1981, PTA membership dropped from a peak in 1979 of 100,881 to a low of 56,616 in 1981. This year, membership inched back up to 80,636. However, that is still 20% below pre-busing levels.

The growth in the number of families that are a melange of stepchildren and stepparents. Educators say stepparents often do not have the time to participate in the school activities of their own children and their stepchildren.

Parents who are hesitant to become involved in school organizations because they are poorly educated or believe the educational system failed them and therefore will fail their children.

The growing number of younger parents, who tend to be less involved in their children’s education.

“Most teen-age parents do not have the skills to take care of children, so consequently they do not know how to foster education skills,” said Genethia Hayes, director of Project Ahead, a Los Angeles Unified School District program that works with schools to increase parental involvement.

Legislation Provision

The overall decline of parental involvement has led some educators to suggest that any legislation concerning schools contain provisions requiring parents to participate.

According to Anne Henderson, a senior associate with the National Committee for Citizens in Education, mandatory parent-involvement provisions in the federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act produced marked increases in the number of parents who participated in special-education programs. The 1975 act requires schools to offer a free, appropriate public education to disabled children in a situation as close as possible to a regular classroom.

But some school officials argue that schools must become more sensitive to parents in their communities to get more of them involved.

Take Hubbard Street School, in a working-class Latino neighborhood in Sylmar.

When Principal Sidney Yukelson arrived at Hubbard five years ago, he discovered that it had only three PTA members and a handful of volunteers working in the classrooms and the library. But many parents appeared at the school before and after classes and during lunch.

“Hispanic parents have a tradition of coming to school to watch their children eat lunch,” Yukelson said.

Invited to Observe

Some schools ask parents to leave after their children finish lunch but Yukelson decided to invite them to observe classroom activities. He also asked their opinions about curricula and sought their advice on how to get more parents involved.

“We never walk out of here feeling that no one listens to us,” said Mary Carroll Negrette, president of Hubbard’s Bilingual Council. “They respect us, and we respect them.”

Today, Hubbard has a level of parental involvement that makes other principals envious. A recent meeting of the 11-member executive PTA board drew 28 additional parents. Besides an active Bilingual Council, there is an advisory council and a School Improvement Committee. In addition, about 30 parents work as paid classroom aides. And many mothers still go to the school during lunch, not just to watch their children eat, but also to assist teachers.

“Hispanic mothers believe that teachers are overworked and that they are helping the teachers by watching the kids during lunch,” Negrette said.

Parent Workshops

Added Lucille Potempo, president of Hubbard’s School Site Council: “If we can give that teacher 10 minutes to rest, then she will be more effective when she is teaching our kids.”

At nearby Vaughn Street school in Pacoima, members of the school’s advisory council requested that part of the federal money the school receives for special programs be spent on a monthly parent education workshop.

“The parent workshops help us to teach parents how to zero in on problems their children may be having in school,” said Grant Halley, special programs coordinator at the school. Eighty-five percent of Vaughn Street’s students come from low-income Latino homes.

“During the workshops, we give parents materials and techniques for teaching their children at home,” Halley said. “This is a way for the parents at home to reinforce what the child learns in the classroom.”

Early-Morning Workshops

Vaughn Street workshops start at 8 a.m. so that parents can attend before work. Topics range from “Composition Idea: Writing a Letter” to “Parent/Teacher Conference--How to and What to Ask.”

“We get about 40 to 45 parents at each workshop,” Halley said. “In the community we serve, one family may have three or four children in our school. So we figure that, if 45 parents come to a workshop, we are having an impact on around 100 kids.”

And the national PTA, according to one official, is working to dispel its image as “an organization largely composed of white, middle-class moms from the suburbs.”

The Chicago-based organization has started translating its brochures and handbooks into Spanish and several Asian languages. Staff members steeped in organizing techniques and sensitive to a variety of cultures fan out to schools that have asked for assistance in establishing parent education programs.

Evening Sessions

These training sessions, held in the evening, teach parents the type of questions to ask in parent-teacher conferences, how to help children with homework and how to set up a nightly homework routine.

“We just want the parents to get involved,” said Vicki Andrews, director of the PTA’s Big City program. “It can be passive involvement, such as signing homework or checking a homework assignment sheet, or more active involvement, such as volunteering at a school, visiting classes or working on an advisory council.”

Six years ago, a group of San Gabriel Valley parents started the Chinese-American PTA of Southern California. The goal of the organization, which has members from Santa Barbara to San Diego, is to help newly arrived Asian immigrants learn how to work with a U. S. school system.

“Asian parents have the wrong idea that the school is the one who has the responsibility for education,” said Robert Kwan, president of the organization. “They believe that parents should have nothing to do with education. We try to educate the parents to participate in the education process, to get involved with the schools.

“We teach them how to get involved, what to do at the schools and what to expect when their children are in elementary, versus when their children are in high school.”

Handbooks Translated

The group recently completed translating parent handbooks into Chinese. Hundreds of the handbooks were distributed last year.

“We particularly wanted the parents of elementary students who are new to the country and to the school systems to get the brochures,” Kwan said. “The booklets describe the responsibilities of parents and what parents should do to take an active role in the children’s education.”

When asked to name one of the best local programs to increase parent involvement, many San Fernando Valley educators point to Project Ahead, a program funded by the Los Angeles school district and staffed by members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of the Greater Los Angeles Area.

Established in 1977, Project Ahead serves 10 schools and about 1,200 households, most of them in South Los Angeles.

‘Educational Appetizers’

Once a month, Project Ahead workers go to participants’ homes and leave what project director Genethia Hayes describes as “educational appetizers,” simple instructions for games and activities that use household items.

For example, parents can help their children understand the mathematical theory of sets by turning the job of setting the family dinner table into a game. Children ask for knives, forks and spoons in sets of two, three, four or five.

“We try to bridge the gap between the school and the community, especially with those parents who would not normally go to school,” Hayes said.

“Parents are the primary educators. They are going to be with the children the longest. It is up to the parent to go to the school and say to the teacher: ‘These are my expectations for my child. This is what I’m going to do for my child. What are you going to do?’ ”