News in brief
State grant supports stipends for parents
Report notes obstacles to public involvement
Finding economies in small school size
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News in brief
State grant supports stipends for parents
A $1.7 million state “Parent Scholars Grant” will allow the School District to expand its program of Parent Assistance Desks (PADs) at schools as well as involve more parents in monitoring safety in school corridors and around schools.
The majority of the funding will be used to provide stipends of $250-$350 to parent volunteers who staff the PADs or patrol at schools for 70 hours over a 10-week period, up to $600 maximum per year, according to District CEO Paul Vallas.
Launched in 2003, PADs were created to provide educational support and information from a parent’s perspective to meet the needs of other parents or guardians. Ultimately 180 schools will be served by the grant.
State Representative Dwight Evans, who presented the District with a check for the program November 7, commented, “With this initiative, we will be able to provide a comprehensive, citywide network of parents working hand-in-hand with educators to help students succeed.”
“This grant will hopefully help remove some of the barriers to parental involvement,” said Mary Yee, director of the District’s Office of Family Engagement and Language Equity Services, which will oversee the program.
District officials say the first phase of the program will focus on 60 schools with existing PAD programs, where needs assessment and parent and community feedback will lay the groundwork for an overall program strategy. Program rules and a training program are to be developed. The District will contract with community-based organizations to assist in recruiting and training parents.
The School District’s Office of Family Engagement and Language Equity Services can be reached at 215-400-4180.
Report notes obstacles to public involvement
A nonprofit research group’s report has urged the School District to “refocus” its attention on building community engagement in Philadelphia’s public school reform efforts.
The September 2005 report, “Time to Engage? Civic Participation in Philadelphia’s School Reform” from the Philadelphia-based group Research for Action, looks at how public involvement in schools in Philadelphia has been shaped by recent changes like the state takeover and privatization of schools.
Its authors warn that as the School District turns to contracts with outside organizations to secure a range of services, neighborhood-based organizations and grassroots advocacy groups are brought into the District’s “growing web of relationships” and may find it hard to take an “independent stance” from the School District.
In addition, the report argues that “the sense of urgency fostered by both the state takeover and NCLB [the No Child Left Behind Act] promotes a rapid reform pace, which can eclipse meaningful public engagement.”
Research for Action and many other education researchers have long argued that the involvement of community groups in developing and pursuing an agenda for school change is an important piece of successful urban school reform. The report notes that in public education, meaningful engagement by the community has three key dimensions: setting an agenda for reform, holding officials accountable, and sustaining reform over time as school and political leaders change.
The report points to a District strategy of “partnership by contracts” as tying many traditionally independent groups into the School District’s agenda at the same time that the School District is developing and approving record numbers of outside contracts, often with little or no public discussion.
The report suggests that the District look at making its decision-making processes more inclusive.
"The District could encourage more civic engagement by developing more forums for parent and community input at the District level and at the school level," commented Eva Gold, the lead author of the report. “With all the new programs and new schools that are now being developed, there are opportunities to strengthen these by involving parents, teachers, and students in decision-making.”
The report can be found on line at www.researchforaction.org or can be ordered by mail free of charge from Research for Action, 3701 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Finding economies in small school size
Conventional wisdom is that small schools serving just a few hundred students, while they may be supportive and effective learning environments, are more expensive than larger schools to build and operate.
But a report profiling a group of 25 successful public schools across the country serving diverse populations found that on average these schools spent almost 17 percent less per student than the per-pupil spending in their school districts.
The new KnowledgeWorks Foundation report, Dollars & Sense II: Lessons from Good, Cost-Effective Small Schools, is a sequel to a 2002 study that also presented evidence that small schools can be cost-effective as well as effective academically.
An analysis of the budgets of 3,000 school construction projects included in the new report found that “small schools are being constructed at a cost similar to or less than those that are still within the limits of reasonable size but are significantly larger.” Districts may lower construction costs by building what the report calls “mega-schools” serving more than 1,000 students, but few schools of this size educate students effectively, the authors note.
Two of the authors of the report, speaking to a November 10 gathering in Philadelphia sponsored by the Philadelphia Education Fund, emphasized the value of the report’s profiles of best practices in 25 successful schools to anyone exploring the development of small schools. The profiles describe the schools’ effective money-saving strategies.
The speakers, Bobbie Hill of the design firm Concordia LLC and Craig Howley of Ohio University, noted that one thing that stood out about the 25 schools of less than 400 students that they highlighted is how different they were from one another. “Their strength is in their variety,” Howley said.
A danger is that standardization will be imposed as school districts like Philadelphia move rapidly to create large numbers of new small schools, Howley added.
For a free copy of the report or to review findings, go to www.goodsmallschools.org.