Do Parents Need Their Own Union?

Public school teachers in most states have been unionized for a long time. What if parents organized themselves into some kind of union? And if they did, what would they stand for?

This idea is getting a test ride in Los Angeles, where educator Steve Barr and other activists have formed the Los Angeles Parents Union (LAPU), a "parent-run, parent-operated coalition dedicated to ensuring that the Los Angeles Unified School District is transformed into the best school district in the nation within the next 10 years."

The Los Angles Parents Union believes that all public schools in LAUSD can be transformed into high performing public schools following the Six Tenets of High-Performing Schools. Here they are, from the organization's Web site:

1. Small schools: All schools should be 500 students or less. LAUSD is undertaking a $14 billion bond-funded construction program that can be used to create small schools;

2. High expectations for all students:  Every student will take a rigorous curriculum.  All high school students will have a college-prep curriculum that meets the University of California/California State University A-G requirements for college entrance;

3. Local control: Increase local control so that critical decisions at each school, including budgets and personnel, are made on site and by school principals and teachers (and not by people who don't have contact with students and parents); 

4. Getting dollars into the classroom: Shift school revenues away from central administration and toward teachers.  Teachers should be paid more and be granted increased input into key policy decisions such as curriculum selection and elective classes;

5. Parent participation: Welcome and expect greater parental participation by requiring that families of students dedicate at least 30 hours annually to their child's/children's education experience (through volunteering, tutoring at home, etc.); and

6.    Keeping schools open later: Schools will be kept open until at least 5 p.m. during school days to accommodate the schedules of working families and the needs of the community at large.

The group got its start when Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools (a Los Angeles charter school management organization), sought to organize parents to support L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's bid to take over the L.A. Unified School District. A July 7 piece in the Los Angeles Daily News quoted an involved parent: "I think it's time for parents to say, 'Enough,' for us to be united, to claim our rights and our benefits."

Barr believes that parental discontent can drive school reform in Los Angeles and beyond. An insightful analysis  of the situation by the Education Sector quoted Barr: "There are a lot of parents [at the parents union meetings] who are in communities that are coming to Green Dot and asking them to open charter schools in their neighborhood out of desperation," Barr said. "What we're saying to them is, 'Hey, forget opening charter schools in your neighborhoods. Let's organize and take over the existing schools and demand that all schools have the same values as our charter schools.'"

This is revolutionary stuff. Parents don't normally get involved in large numbers when it comes to big-time fights about power and control in schools. All too often, students and families and their everyday concerns are nowhere to be seen as politicians, teachers unions and business leaders duke it out over money and power in schools. I hope that the L.A. Parents Union can change that balance in Los Angeles.

At the same time, it's too early to say whether these parents, armed with these Six Tenets, will be able to really improve education in Los Angeles.

Barr is telling parents to "demand that all schools have the same values as our charter school." But what are those values exactly? How well are they captured by the Six Tenets?

To get a better sense of why parents like Green Dot schools, I spent some time on GreatSchools.net checking out parent ratings and reviews of their five schools that have been open for more than a year. (You can link to GreatSchools profiles of all of these schools here.)

Checking out the parent reviews of Animo Leadership High School, one of the first Green Dot schools, I found this gem:

"Animo is an excellent school in the sense that the teachers and staff are caring, energetic, intelligent and highly informed. My daughter's experience in this small school environment has been incredibly positive. The class sizes are small, and the teachers prove themselves time and again to take a personal interest in the student's well-being and success!"

Aha, now we're getting some insight into what might make this school special. Exploring further, I checked out the Web site of Animo Leadership High School and learned what animo (a Spanish word) means in the eyes of the principal there:

"Animo is the desire, ganas, heart, fun, loyalty, dedication, perseverance, intensity, commitment, determination, sacrifices, power, patience, tolerance, dreams, change, a promise, family, challenge, support, knowledge, team work, love, devotion, friendships, vigor, a new start, a key, faith, strength and most important hope. Hope for the students, hope for their families, and hope for the community. Hope that turns dreams into a reality. Hope that explains why parents make the sacrifices that they make every day."

Wow! This looks like a school that's got heart and soul, and will go to great lengths to inspire and support each of its students to find their way to success in college and life. The API numbers for Animo Leadership are not great, but I'm still inspired if it is true, as the Green Dot Web site says, that 61% of the Class of 2006 from Animo Leadership High School is attending  a four-year university in fall 2006.

So let me now venture an answer to the question I asked earlier: it seems to me that the Six Tenets do not capture much of the essence of what makes Green Dot Public Schools special and successful.

What's missing from the tenets is animo itself! Or better yet, "animo + teaching skill." Yes, it would help, as the tenets suggest, if many urban schools were smaller and open later. And parents need to be more involved. But to make this formula work — especially the local control — you have to have great teachers and principals who know how to build and run an urban school with heart and soul, and who have the knowledge and skill required to teach really well so that kids can transcend immense barriers, graduate and get to college.

Heart and soul AND technical teaching skills are necessary. Great schools are built by teachers and principals who create programs and support systems to serve their students. They know where to find the best curricula and how to adapt it to their situation. They  know (for example) algebra  well enough to teach it — something that cannot be taken for granted in urban high schools. They're deeply committed to building a culture that values learning, and to helping students find the joy in learning and accomplishment.

So here's my advice to the Los Angeles Parent Union. Add Tenet Seven: Great principals and teachers. And march on the Los Angeles Unified School District and City Hall until the district and city leadership comes up with a crackerjack plan to recruit, develop and retain teachers and principals with that ganas and the skills it takes to drive schools to greatness.

Steve Barr and Green Dot Public Schools may have figured out how to recruit and retain quality staff in their 10 charter schools. But if L.A. schools are going to get much better across the board, as the Parents Union wants, someone is going to have to figure out how to build the skills and capacity of thousands of teachers and principals at hundreds of schools across the city.

Maybe the Parents Union can put pressure on L.A. leaders to come up with some answers to this challenge. I hope so!

Comments

[scarm]

Yet, we, as teachers, are responsible for this student staying awake all day to focus on why one must learn to speak properly and compute algebraic equations correctly.a

[mark]

Dear Katalina,

i completly agree with you

[Mom]

In response to Catalina Beltran:

I am a parent and I have been one for a couple of decades (since 10 years after you believe that immigrants ceased to learn perfect English). Furthermore, as a social worker and community advocate, I have spent a good bit of time much closer to people's homes than most teachers--where one actually has the opportunity to see (or NOT!) the mom in bed with the crack cocaine snorting boyfriend, or whatever.

I say, give it a rest. As a parent it is tough work having to wade through the stereotypes every time I go in for a parent-teacher conference. The slop that you are laying on parents isn't true for me, and it isn't true for most of the parents I have known in some pretty down and out neighborhoods. It does serve as a pretty good excuse, and a gigantic barrier when it comes to schools being able to sort out what works from what doesn't.

Do your students a favor. Get to know their parents well enough (even if you have to leave the building to do it) to have a clue how many are actually on crack, and how many are just dog tired of being seen that way.

[Catalina Beltran]

As a school teacher, it is quite frustrating to attempt to have students study at home and be expected to return the next day with homework when "mom" is in bed with "Cracked-out" live-in, ex-con, illegal alien boyfriend, and sister and her boy friend are playing RAP full blast in the next room all night. This is in between visits from cops, drug dealers and other seedy neighbors. Yet, we, as teachers, are responsible for this student staying awake all day to focus on why one must learn to speak properly and compute algebraic equations correctly. DO YOU THINK HE GIVES A FAT FROG??? He's wondering if "mom" will be home and not locked up in jail all night. Wake up America, as to what our neighborhoods really are! Maybe you've been living in la la land too long. The NCLB act is a joke to all, not to mention a political agenda for self-serving politians who are hell-bent on destroying our American Public School System. Children 30=50 years ago learned perfect English, impeccable writing skills and they were IMMIGRANTS! Teachers today spend so much time trying to attend meetings and viewing data to compete with state standards that the kids are falling through the cracks with so little in class instruction time. Wake up America, YOU'VE BEEN HAD!!!!

[Janice Mitchell]

Since the Pledge of Allegiance and The Lord's Prayer
are not allowed in most
public schools anymore
Because the word "God" is mentioned....
A kid in Arizona wrote the attached:

NEW School prayer.
(I love it.)

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That's no offense; it's a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God's name is prohibited by the state.

We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bi ble.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.
It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong,
We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It's scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school's a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

> Amen

If you aren't ashamed to do this,
please pass this on.

Jesus said,

"If you are ashamed of me,
I will be ashamed of you before my Father."

Not ashamed? Pass this on.

[Joe]

Charter schools take away precious dollars that can be used to improve public schools.

[Omar Khalif]

GREAT! I know that a PARENT UNION is one of the best "solutions" or ideas anyone has come up with.

At times in my campaign, I often say that, I'm speaking for the PARENTS UNION.
We need to spend more time investing into our children and not the system of a union.

However, I do support unions, often times it's the people that run them, that make some union non-functional.

Thanks Bill

[Tim]

Excellent Tenets! I for one believe that this works given the example of Valle Vista School in San Jose. Small School and Plenty of parent participation and an API to prove it works.

I definitely believe in and would love to see local control and funding. In fact, I think it would be great if we could do a bottom up school funding. Funding the classrooms first, 100%. Then the local staff, buildings, district, and on up. Children come first.

It would be great to see this come to pass.

Tim