 School Principals Set Tone
for
Parent Coordinators in High Schools
By Robert Waddell, March 24, 2009
Over sixteen-years ago, Ana Lazala emigrated from the Dominican Republic and worked in a New York City factory. Feeling down, since leaving her daughter in Santo Domingo, a friend took Lazala to El Puente, a community organization devoted to education and activism in Brooklyn.
By the time El Puente opened their first school, El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, Lazala had been volunteering there and would become the school’s parent coordinator for over 4 years. In 2008 she was promoted to guidance counselor and still fondly remembers her years as a parent coordinator, which she called, “a good opportunity to get more parents into the educational system. For me as a parent coordinator, I saw myself as a bridge between parents, teachers and the system.”
Ideally, when the Department of Education introduced Parent Coordinators into public schools, it was to give parents better access to the system and to information regarding their children’s education. Parent Coordinators are different from the PTA, which has traditionally been an independent body within schools, since they are employees of DOE. However, depending on the school, for Parent Coordinators, it’s a mixed bag: Someone who is helpful and someone who is not.
Some critics have said that parent coordinators act as buffers between teachers and administrators who don’t want to deal directly with parent’s concerns. And, it is the principal of any given school who dictates the role of parent coordinators and how they interact with parents. Parent Coordinators can be a resource to navigate through the system, sometimes they work as interpreters, gatekeepers or as unresponsive members of the school administration, dealing with parent’s needs.
According to the Department of Education, parent coordinators serve as a liaison between the community and schools. A spokesperson for DOE said that 1 parent coordinator was placed in each school with student populations over 200 students, approximately 1500 parent coordinators, to address parent’s concerns and to help families navigate through the school system. DOE believes that the parent coordinator initive, which began in 2003, is successful due in part to the overwhelming response and enthusiasm from parents.
Lazala’s first task as coordinator was to create more parent teacher conferences and welcome parents into the educational process. She said that it was the principal of her school who set the tone and direction for her work as a parent coordinator. She identified the top 3 qualities that make a good parent coordinator: someone who is educated, wants to help people and someone who believes in creating valuable relationships with people, she said.
“Part of the foundation of what we do,” said Lazala, “is to make parents a strong part of the educational process. This was my job to concentrate on parents and their needs.”
However, according to some critics of the parent coordinator program, it is individual principals who set the tone for their schools which in turn either gives or takes away from parent coordinators the freedom to make parents feel they are a part of their child’s education. Lazala said she never felt barriers from the principal of El Puente Academy and she always felt part of her principal’s leadership team so she could effectively do her job.
Lilian Ghali has been a Parent Coordinator since 2003 at The Brooklyn International High School, a school that educates newly arrived immigrants, where she has gone beyond her job description and created informational fliers translated into languages as varied as Chinese, Bengali and Spanish. As part of her job, Ghali has also set up 10 parent workshops over the school year varying in topics from “How to Understand a Student’s Report Card,” “Graduation Requirements” and “College Prep.”
“Here we work as a family,” said Ghali of parents and her principal, “Parents are really happy they have someone who speaks their language. They’re not scared to come to school and ask questions. We’ve built real relationships and we solve problems.”
Ghali was happy that the principal of The Brooklyn International High School has been so supportive and receptive of her parent coordinator work. She said that she works with other administrators to help answer parent’s questions and resolve their issues however Ghali also said she was very fortunate. She has heard of “bad stories from the outside,” (other Parent Coordinators) where principals at other high schools have had Parent Coordinators on lunch room duty and who were totally unsupportive of reaching out to parents and fully utilizing their Parent Coordinators.
“It depends on the leadership and direction of the principal,” said Gisela Alvarez, Senior Project Director for Advocates for Children. “A principal who wants to engage parents can have powerful ties with the community.”
Alvarez said that there’s a question as to whether Parent Coordinators can be good advocates for students when they are employees of the Department of Education and have no real power in public schools.
Ron Isaac wrote in a 2008 editorial on line for EdWize, News and Opinion, that “…principals have total power to hire and fire parent coordinators certainly compromises the independence that coordinators need to represent parents who may have legitimate conflicts with school policy….(this) denies (parents) access to school administrators who in the past were accountable….Exploiting parents by giving them the ruse of ‘empowerment’ will not redeem the system.”
Alvarez and Isaac’s criticism mirrors a 2004 report from Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum who reported that parent coordinators were not returning phone calls to parents while lacking the basic knowledge about educational issues.
“Parent Coordinators don’t always have the authority to change things in schools,” said Alvarez. “A parent coordinator can be a vital part in the way parents interact with schools, a link to the community that the school serves,” however she went on, “some parents have done some wonderful work on parent’s behalf other times the coordinators are not available, and the parent coordinators haven’t built trust and some parents don’t see them as useful.”
At the International High School at Prospect Heights, which has a mostly Latino population, Miguel Antunes took it on himself to coordinate the school’s PTA as part of his Parent Coordinator job. Besides dealing with student issues and parent concerns, Antunes said that the job of Parent Coordinator is shaped by the needs of the school.
“I try to provide a lot of outreach,” said Antunes, “to students and families. I work closely with the guidance department.”
A day for Antunes includes answering emails, preparing parent workshops, mediating fights between students and answering parent’s questions. He enjoys times when students come to his office and ask him for advice about school, going to college and their futures, he said.
“The role of the Parent Coordinator is very ambiguous,” said Antunes, “it depends on the needs of the school and the student population and their families. I do outreach to be able to get parents to participate and get them to be more proactive.”
Even though forming and coordinating the PTA is not part of his official Parent Coordinator job, Antunes said that in doing this he’s getting more parents into the school and involved in their children’s education. But it’s hard, one time he’ll have a meeting of 20 parents and the second meeting will be of 15 different parents. Antunes complained of parent’s lack of consistency.
Parent Coordinators have found jobs, done translation and interpretation for parents and like Antunes, they “go that extra mile,” he said, to do what ever needs to be done to service the population of his school.
A recent study found that one of the largest factors for parent coordinators is making sure they speak the same language as the parents and students they are serving.
“From Translation to Participation: A Survey of Parent Coordinators in New York City and Their Ability to Assist Non-English Speaking Parents,” a study conducted by Advocates for Children a year after the initive began, found that many Parent Coordinators “were ill-equipped to fulfill the needs of their non-English speaking parent constituency.” They found that parent coordinators could not translate or communicate well with non-English speaking parents and that the needs of parents who don’t speak English far exceeded the capacity of parent coordinators.
The Advocates for Children study found that in not being able to translate or understand parents, coordinators were in effect under serving the needs of the parents. If parents and Parent Coordinators can not understand one another consequently a parent’s needs and concerns will not be effectively addressed. Those Parent Coordinators who could translate a second language for parents found they spent more time as an interpreter than as a liaison. The study concluded that many Parent Coordinators were not fulfilling their responsibilities as Coordinators if they spent most of their time as translators.
They saw that schools needed skilled translators as well as someone who could guide a parent through the system. After the study was released, the Department of Education created an office of translation services to help parents unravel the school system’s policies affecting their children.
“Our argument,” said Alvarez, “is that immigrant parents should not have to rely on Parent Coordinators to know what’s going on in the school….We still have a long way to go but they’re getting better in small steps.”
Lazala stands firm that El Puente Academy’s parent coordinator program is the exception to the rule, a positive anomaly, in an already shaky educational system. She said that she was surprised when she has heard from other parent coordinators at other schools that they are unhappy and are merely used as stop-gaps for principals who avoided contact with parents, instead of building trust and community as it happens at El Puente Academy.
“Parent coordinators can find it more difficult in getting more done if they don’t have support from the principal,” said Lazala. “Our principal makes sure he meets and gives parents respect. He validates the parent’s and the student’s needs.”
This article was produced under the New York Community Media Alliance’s Press Fellowship—Developing an Education Beat. |
