Four charters that try new tools for parent involvement

Offering seats on governing boards is just one of the strategies for engagement that local charters have used.

by Dale Mezzacappa

Wissahickon Charter School in Germantown employs a parent outreach coordinator and formally acknowledges all kinds of parental activities – from reading aloud at home to raising money to chaperoning trips.

The Folk Arts – Cultural Treasures Charter School (FACTS) in Chinatown, which seeks out families from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, has language interpreters on staff and offers parents simultaneous translations of meetings.

At Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in West Philadelphia, the president of the Parent Teacher Association sits in on weekly administrative team meetings.

At Independence Charter School in Center City, 10 of the 13 members of the governing body are parents of children in the school.

“Our school was founded by parents,” said Jurate Krokys, the CEO of Independence, a K-8 school in the city's historic district. “Part of the mission of the school is parent involvement.”

Charter schools have the opportunity and the incentive to rewrite the playbook on parent engagement. Opportunity – because the charter movement is based on the premise that parents should have choice of schools and more control over their children's education. And incentive – because charters depend on widening their circle of committed families to stay in operation.

“Charter schools rely on parents, and they realize that the success of their schools comes from involving the parents as well,” said Deborah Toney-Moore, a parent with students at both Harambee and Imhotep, a charter high school in West Oak Lane.

Charters give parents the chance to be part of the school's governance because their trustees function as a board of education. Many schools set up their charters so that parents must be represented – or even have a majority – on the board.

But the chance to help shape a school from scratch goes much deeper than that, and can be both exciting and scary. “The majority of our families want to be involved but some aren't sure yet how they fit in,” said Angela Walden, the parent outreach coordinator at Wissahickon. “It can be intimidating.”

Another interesting aspect of charter schools is that the people working in them, including the principal and teachers, often enroll their own children – a relative rarity in urban public schools that serve disadvantaged students. At Wissahickon, 10 staff members, including CEO Julie Stapleton-Carroll, have children in the school.

Some research indicates that parents who go out of their way to choose a school, as do those who apply to charters, are more likely to be involved. But charter school leaders report facing some of the same difficulties in getting working class and low-income parents to be as active as more affluent ones. To do that, some of these schools go out of their way to recognize different means of involvement.

“All parents want great things for kids, but some define their help as making sure their children get to school and keeping their clothes clean...and feel that education is very much the teacher's job,” said Krokys, who describes herself as the daughter of immigrants who felt that way. “Their attitude is, 'Who am I, with just a GED, to interfere?'”