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Five groups take different paths to empower parents and families
Philadelphia has a rich landscape of organizations that bring together parents around education issues, both inside and outside of schools.
Here we profile five that reflect some of the diversity of constituencies, issues, and approaches found among local efforts to organize and empower parents. They are Parents United for Public Education, Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project, the Sayre Beacon program, JUNTOS, and Philadelphia ACORN.
Parents United for Public Education
A group of mostly elementary school parents created Parents United for Public Education last spring in response to districtwide staff and budget cuts that affected class size.
“We’re interested in finding solutions so our kids don’t suffer,” said Anthony P. Ingargiola, a parent at Bache-Martin Elementary School. “It doesn’t help us to say who should have done what when. The question is what are we all going to do to make sure our kids don’t get hurt?”
In May, when the School Reform Commission initially discussed budget cuts to schools, Parents United for Public Education began to speak out and mobilize.
“We were able to get in touch with other parents from different schools and worked with a couple of education organizations.... We decided to hold a press conference outside the School District,” said Helen Gym, an organizer of Parents United for Public Education and parent at Powel Elementary School.
Since that public action, the all-volunteer group has redoubled its efforts to make these parents’ voices heard around Philadelphia. As Gym explained, “Over the summer a small group of parents met with every member of the City Council Education Committee to raise the issues of class size and District budget priorities.”
The group includes many members of Home and School Associations but is not affiliated with Philadelphia Home and School Council. It now involves parents from a dozen different schools.
This fall, when the District’s $73 million budget shortfall was revealed, Parents United for Public Education held press conferences and meetings with District officials to communicate a parent perspective on the crisis. They joined with groups like Youth United for Change to help fill the District’s auditorium during SRC meetings in November.
The group’s messages included not only opposition to school-based budget cuts but also support for cuts in contracts with private companies.
Their success is shown by how the District has responded to their persistence, said Gym.
“If it were not for the presence of vocal, concerned parents, we think the District would have tried to downplay the situation and institute severe cuts that would impact our schools for years. As it stands, we hope we’ve succeeded in getting the District to recognize the impact of last year’s cuts on schools and set more school-based priorities for this year,” she said.
Parent Harry Levant, who is also president of the Home and School Association at Shawmont, said he wants to let Paul Vallas and the SRC know, “We are not going away. The cause is too important, and our issues are vital to the education of the children of the City of Philadelphia.”
–Samantha Adler
Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project
“We started out just wanting to do something for our kids, and then we found out that they were removing asbestos within the school with our children still there,” said Kathy Cruz, remembering how she became involved in Eastern Pennsylvania Organization Project (EPOP) ten years ago as a parent organizer.
When meeting to plan volunteer reading hours, parents at Cayuga School realized there was a pattern to their children’s sickness. They traced the illness to asbestos and successfully campaigned to have their children out of the school during asbestos removal.
EPOP grew out of church congregations in 1992 in North Philadelphia that wanted to improve the community. The organization now represents 25 affiliated congregations and several community organizations.
Although their work is not limited to education issues, EPOP parent leader and Vice President Dolores Shaw said, “We realized as an organization that education and schools and families are the front line in what goes on in communities.”
Early accomplishments included supporting parents at Sheppard Elementary in Kensington to open a full-day kindergarten. Parents at Taylor Elementary in North Philadelphia successfully advocated for a full-service kitchen, and parents at nearby McClure were able to re-establish a school library.
EPOP’s work with the Willard Parents Group successfully pressured the District to find a site and commit funds to rebuild Willard Elementary. Parent organizer Carmen Rivera credits EPOP for guiding and motivating her in this eight-year campaign. To her, EPOP itself “is a school.” She said, “I learned a lot. So today, I’m really involved in the schools in my area.”
Much of EPOP’s work is focused at the individual school level. President Steve Honeyman recognized that the grassroots nature of EPOP is “both a strength and a challenge.” He said that when working with parents “who are dealing with the day-to-day survival of their children,” it is hard to mobilize them around district-level issues.
But EPOP also works at the district level. In 2003, EPOP successfully pressured the District to re-adjust its funding formula for Title I schools after District changes in the formula redirected money to schools with fewer poor students.
EPOP was a founding partner of the Philadelphia Youth Transitions Collaborative, which has published a report (see chart) finding that 50 percent of entering ninth graders in Philadelphia public schools do not graduate in four years. EPOP is now preparing a report on teacher quality and equity in Philadelphia. Honeyman said he hopes these publications will draw attention to a “broken” system and lead to improvements.
EPOP is funded by foundation grants and membership dues from churches.
–Teresa Kelley
Sayre Beacon
As many as 180 parents, children and community members have flocked to Family Fitness Nights this year at Sayre High School – one of many activities of the Sayre Beacon program.
Sayre houses one of the more than 25 Beacon programs presently serving as school-based community centers across Philadelphia. A parent-led council shapes the programming of the Beacon program at Sayre, which also serves the population of two feeder schools, Hamilton and Bryant, in West Philadelphia.
Managed by the Center for Community Partnerships (CCP) at the University of Pennsylvania, the Beacon program at Sayre is dedicated to upgrading the school’s image and climate.
Sayre Beacon provides afterschool programming at the school for students in grades K-12, a summer program for elementary school children, and numerous clubs, teams, and workshops for parents.
“Our philosophy [is] not just to be a menu of services, but to really engage parents and to get them to be the deliverers of services – not just recipients,” said Christopher Bower, director of the Beacon program.
Sayre Beacon keeps parents involved through the Beacon Council, a parents’ and stakeholders’ group. According to Bower, “The Beacon Council is crucial in outreach and sponsoring events.” The Council acts as a governing body, coming up ideas for programming, policies, evaluation, and staffing.
Activities are intended to improve educational, recreational, and health-related opportunities and the overall quality of life for students at Sayre High School, its feeder schools, and the surrounding community. To move toward these goals, according to parent Tanya Thompson, co-chair of the Beacon Council, “Parental involvement is essential – the Beacon has to have a presence with parents.”
Besides the well-attended Family Fitness Nights, the Council has organized health, nutrition, financial, and job skills workshops for parents. The Council also assists the Beacon to improve Sayre High School’s community relations by holding block parties and communicating with the local community.
Parents with children enrolled in Beacon activities volunteer with the program for six hours a month and also attend monthly parent meetings. As Bower put it, “The Beacon provides that community with a safe place, a positive place, building positive relations with adults, [Penn] students, and their peers. Once a parent realizes that that is what we have to offer, they are often times pretty willing to get involved.”
Thompson sees the relationship between Sayre Beacon and the parents as natural. The Sayre Beacon, she observed, “needs to build relationships in the community with parents to actually achieve what they want to achieve, to see the community grow as the program grows.”
–Samantha Adler
JUNTOS
“It’s about respect,” said JUNTOS director and co-founder Peter Bloom, explaining why parents are organizing at Southwark Elementary in South Philadelphia, a school with a majority immigrant (Latino and Asian) student population.
“It’s talking and talking but not acting,” he added. Bloom described a scene at a Back to School Night where there were translators present, but he saw no signs of Spanish-speaking translators actually translating during the event, despite the school’s 30-40 recently immigrated Latino families.
JUNTOS began working with parents on education issues in spring 2006. As a result of a survey of the South Philadelphia Mexican immigrant community, JUNTOS began focusing its efforts at Southwark Elementary School.
A main issue of concern for parents at Southwark is language and information access. “I think that public schools should all be equal... In some schools, they have very good programs and in others they don’t, and in some schools we don’t know anything about whether they have it or not,” said parent organizer Martha Lara.
Parents also mention teacher quality, safety, and school disorganization as primary concerns. In some cases, this is a matter of raising awareness and holding the school accountable for serving non-English-speaking immigrant populations.
Currently, there are 15 parents organizing to improve conditions in Southwark. Bloom described the organization’s role, saying, “Our job is to basically help [parents] think about what are the questions that we need to be asking, what is it that we really want from the school, what is possible, what’s the law ... so that we know what we need to push for so that Southwark becomes a better school.”
Lara said, “If it weren’t for [JUNTOS], we would be, well, like before – not knowing anything.”
JUNTOS is a member of Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project (EPOP). Martha Lara said the ability to work with an organization with years of experience in parent organizing has been valuable.
JUNTOS (the Spanish word for “together”) is a community organization founded in 2002, growing out of the Mexican community at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in South Philadelphia. JUNTOS is funded by foundation grants.
-Teresa Kelley
Philadelphia ACORN
The goal of ACORN’s education initiatives is to “touch people in the community, and allow them to see they can win things in their school,” said Carol Hemingway, president of Philadelphia ACORN.
Sometimes this is a difficult process, added Hemingway, since many parents “have had negative experiences with the District and distrust it as a result.”
ACORN hosts information sessions for parents, for example, concerning the rights of parents under the No Child Left Behind Act. Hemingway explained, “They already know the issues, but they don’t necessarily know that they have rights and how to effectively get change in the community.”
“Grow Your Own” is an ongoing District initiative to train community-based paraprofessionals so that they may become teachers. The target for this program is the “community person who lives in the community, has an investment in the community, and is going to stay in the community,” said Hemingway. This, she said, will lead to teachers “who can identify with children there and can be role models.”
ACORN parents initially raised concerns that led to the “Grow Your Own” initiative when budget cuts caused many schools to cut teacher assistant positions. Most assistants were people – and sometimes the only people in the school – who had grown up in the community. Parents were also involved in the process of building support for the program.
Two ACORN members currently serve on the South Philadelphia board of a new districtwide training initiative, the Parent Leadership Academy. ACORN encourages all its members to volunteer to serve on PLA boards and attend PLA courses.
ACORN works with parents on issues they identify through an organizational structure of community-based neighborhood chapters that send representatives to a citywide board that plans citywide campaigns.
“ACORN is not a service provider. We teach people to advocate for themselves and be leaders in their community,” said Hemingway.
Philadelphia ACORN, part of a national organization, was founded in 1977. There are currently six active neighborhood chapters in Philadelphia with over 8,000 members throughout the city. Funding comes from membership dues and private foundations.
–Teresa Kelley