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The first county-wide Parent Leadership Conference draws all districts, interested parents to Parkrose High School Community Center last month
HEATHER HILL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| David Wynde, Portland Public School Board member, expresses frustration with the lack of stable public school funding source to Parkrose Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray following their seminar at the 2010 Parent Leadership Conference held at Parkrose High School Community Center last month. MEMO PHOTOS TIM CURRAN |
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| The workshop discussing school funding brought parents directly in touch with a panel of policy makers, including Parkrose Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray, Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler, and Portland Public Schools school board member David Wynde. |
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| Doug Wells, former CPPS president and a member of the national board of Parents for Public Schools both opened the conference and closed the day helping parents form best practice strategies for community involvement in schools. |
“For the past nine years we have just been Portland Public Schools, and we decided that that is ridiculous because it is separating out kids, and we have many different school districts,” said CPPS co-president Kathy Couch.
“We are seeing more collaboration across the six districts, and I find that very exciting,” commented Carole Smith, Portland Pubic Schools Superintendent, who participated in a workshop on budget funding.
Aimed at building a network of diverse parent, family and community resources to support children, CPPS organized the conference to introduce parents to the wide range of activities they can undertake to support their kids and other kids in their community.
The free conference, which provided on-site child-care, assembled a wide variety of services under one roof. Representatives from - among others - El Programa Hispano, Outdoor School, GirlStrength, Healthy Kids, Multnomah County Library, Oregonians for Water, Parks and Wildlife, Playworks, Resolutions NW, Stand Up Parenting and the US Dept. of Education crowded the entrance with informational displays.
The workshops, scheduled in two sessions and held in classrooms, offered practical information such as navigating the K-8 transfer policy, understanding school funding and defining the roles and responsibilities of a school board. Other workshops addressed the social challenges children and parents encounter. Workshops on bullying, restorative justice in schools, and understanding the adolescent brain spoke to parents concerned about discipline issues inside the classroom and out.
Couch and other organizers highlighted CPPS's efforts to include underrepresented families in the conversation. “Our aim was to get the voices of parents who don't typically go to school board meetings and such,” she said. “We want to bring the voices of everybody in rather than the same people you see, though we love their energy.”
A historically underrepresented part of the community has always been immigrant families. “We know that there is a lot of information available to parents who speak English,” said CPPS member and parent Roger Devine, “it is easier for parents who speak English to be involved with the schools. That is only one part of our community, and we have to fight the isolation that can happen and work to bring people into the larger effort to support the public schools.”
Due to extensive outreach efforts working with Title I and ESL departments in the various districts, as well as community groups and the city and county, 47 percent of the 250 attendees at the 2010 conference spoke a language other than English at home. Workshops on community resources, family involvement, college prep and understanding the US education system were presented in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Somali. Families who checked in for interpretation services could also receive assistance in Russian.
Registrations began at 8:45 a.m. Doug Wells, past president of CPPS and currently on the Parents for Public Schools national board of directors, opened the conference at 9:30 with Parkrose Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray and mayor Sam Adams, while parents enjoyed a light breakfast of morning pastries, coffee and tea. Two 45-minute workshop sessions followed, after which the assembly gathered again in the commons for lunch and a group workshop run by Wells during which they discussed the best practices for parent involvement in schools.
But while parent leadership headlined the conference, the networking of resources designed to aid them underlined a CPPS tenet that the entire community has a role in ensuring that children receive the education and support they need to become successful contributors down the road.
Portland Council PTA President and former CPPS board member, Beryl Morrison, described parent leadership as “activating parents to do what they need to do, step out of their parent role a little bit and look out for other kids and thinking about kids in the wider community as community effort.” By gathering parents from all Multnomah County school districts, the conference brought parents face to face with parents from schools that they might not normally interact with. It demonstrated the cooperative workshop ethic where all participants were encouraged to communicate freely in order to best understand not only the official policies governing schools but the diverse needs of those who attend them.
An ethic of ownership is deeply embedded in Parents for Public Schools' mission. After all, public schools, funded by tax dollars paid by the public, grants the tax-paying public the absolute right, and duty, to have a say in how public schools perform, whether or not they have children in the schools. Couch put it simply, “They are public schools, so they are our schools, and they are our kids, so they are a valuable part.”
Formed in Jackson, Miss. in 1989, Parents for Public Schools became an official national organization in 1991. It has since expanded to 15 chapters in 10 states, with CPPS joining in 1999. It touts itself as, “the only national organization that actively recruits parents to public schools and advocates for parents taking a role in decision-making, school improvement, and accountability.”
The parent leadership conference not only gave parents strategies for advocacy, they also introduced them to those who value their input, “We couldn't have pulled off the conference without collaboration with Parkrose School District, Becca Stavenjord from Multnomah County's Commission on Children, Families & Communities, and a number of people in Portland's Office of the Mayor,” said Wells.
Other essential contributors included the Parental Information and Resource Center-Education Northwest, Portland Parks & Recreation, Nike, KinderCare and Impact NW. Also showing their support were Albertson's and the Portland Trailblazers who donated respective door prizes in the form of grocery gift certificates and hats autographed by Greg Oden, Andre Miller, and Joel Pryzbilla.
Only five lucky parents walked away with such a souvenir, but many others found new outlets to help their child succeed. As for CPPL, Wells commented afterwards, “I think we apply what we learn and make each year better than the next. We are proud to focus on bringing in a group of parents and community members that truly represent Portland's diversity. This year was our most successful in that regard. We are excited to build on this success next year.”
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