Education Advisory

Starting a Parent Advisory Council from Scratch

There is no parent group in your school and you would like to help start one? How to begin?

Of course, there are many benefits:
• parents feel welcome in their child’s school
• parents want their voice – concerns, praise, issues – to be respected and have follow-up
• families empowered through genuine involvement pass that feeling of efficacy on to their children
• and on and on….the research is heavy on benefits, to family, school and community.

Here are some of the negatives of thwarted parent involvement:
• frustrated, disenchanted, unhappy parents
• unmet student needs because advocacy on their behalf is cut-off
• poor school achievement
• and so forth….the research tells many sad tales.

So, how to begin:

1. One person can start the ball rolling….Gather a few parents and feel out the need.
Concerns might be
___ academic achievement                 ___ parents feel unwelcome
___ bullying situations                         ___ parents not involved
___ special needs students                 ___ concerns not dealt with
___ discipline: uneven, unfair, not there ___ reading problems
___ need a school handbook of policies, rules, procedures, philosophy
________________________________________________________________
2. The structure of a parent group can start out with 2 or 3 volunteers. Call yourselves the Steering Committee who agree to do the basics. Keep notes.
3. See the principal. Two (never one) make an appointment to see the principal requesting the means to set up a parent advisory council. Discuss how a school wide news item (best in the school newsletter) will issue the invitation to a meeting to form a PAC.
4. You can use carefully structured questionnaires to gather input and solicit ideas as part of ongoing discussions between schools and parents. (Example: School Checkup, Checklist for Effective Schools, Parent Satisfaction Index. See this website, under Parent Advisory Councils.)
5. Parent Rights in Education is a general guideline for parents about their role, rights, and responsibilities in education. You can modify this 20 year old flyer or pass it out to parents as is. (See this website, under Parent Rights)
6. Structure of more organized parent meetings should occur at the school at a time convenient for most parents and upon sufficient prior notice. A Chair, Vice-chair, and Secretary are the main officers you need. Class representatives are very desirable. (Do’s & Don’ts of a PAC, Levels of Parent Involvement , see this website, under Parent Advisory Councils)
7. Parent Advisory Councils should meet independently as parents, then the principal can have a set time to attend to hear concerns, praise, suggestions, whatever, or provide a report, news, etc.

Remember: In this day of the Internet it is easy to get sidetracked because there are 1,000’s of sites to visit. “Parent involvement” is one of the latest education fads, and whole industries have grown up to feed this move. But, unfortunately, much is superficial and symbolic here, as with other “reforms”. You, as parents, in your school need to keep your two eyes open:
☺ Integrity – be true to your cause
☺ Independence – don’t get sidelined into agendas of others.
You are fulfilling the most basic of human instincts: Guiding your children to independence and self fulfillment.

The most frequently asked questions from parent groups go like this: “How can we be more effective? We are fed up with doing tea and cookies, fund-raising….We want to know how to help kids in school.”

If your parent group seeks to be the right-hand partner in the educational function of the school, than the first thing it should do is agree that it wants an advisory or consultative role in the school. Meaning, that the parents should be consulted before decisions are made which affect either the parents or the students.

This consultative/advisory role should be clearly understood and written down (______ Parent Advisory Council). 

-          suggestions about learning experiences

-          suggestions or changes to school policies and procedures

-          evaluating innovative programs

-          assist parents to get information about school programs and procedures

-          be informed about events affecting educational programs

-          recommend alterations and renovations

-          review curriculum

-          recommend on code of student conduct

-          help set program priorities

-          advise on means to ensure racial and cultural understanding

-          help ensure the safest possible environment for the well-being of all

1. Don’t defer to the principal. If your voice is to represent parent opinion, don’t ask the principal what he thinks, ask the parents.
2. Don’t accept someone-else’s agenda. Stick to what the parents want on the agenda, unless there is a legitimate item brought to you for your consultation. (What color the walls should be painted is hardly an item for consultation!)
3. Don’t think that being busy is any sign of accomplishment. Such involvement can be empty and meaningless to the quality of education at your school. Pick your targets, determine priorities.
4. Don’t assume the parent view will automatically be listened to. Put it in writing, take minutes and have these circulated among parents and staff.
5. Don’t hesitate to delegate jobs to sub-committees, or to refer a question for further research and recommendations. Sub-committees can greatly lessen the load and aid in good decision-making. (Sub-committees are a good place for those parents who want to be involved in fund-raising or “auxiliary” activities.)
6. Don’t (ever) get discouraged because only a small number of parents are involved in your advisory group. Statistics show that only a small number of parents want to be involved at this level, but if this group is wise, it will not only ensure a parent voice at the school, but will also make sure that all parents do have opportunities for meaningful involvement, whatever their level of need or interest.

WARNING: This next item is reprinted to show how “lightly” the subject of parent advisory groups was taken in the late 70’s. This was included in a principals’ workshop, hopefully to elicit “positive” suggestions. (Maybe, it IS a good teaching tool. What do you think?)

ADVISORY COMMITTEES

APPENDIX A
 

Eight ways to destroy an advisory group:
 

1. Stall.  Hold the first meeting in November.  The momentum will be lost by January, and June will soon be there.
2. Be subtly negative in your communications, always declaring willingness to co-operate.
3. Offer no leadership.  Try to avoid an agenda for meetings and bring no ideas.  Talk endlessly.
4. Dominate meetings.  Discourage discussion of sensitive topics.  Hide behind legalistic obstructions.
5. Involve the group in an elaborate and lengthy report.  Then let it gather dust.
6. If they mean business, isolate the advisory group’s leaders.  Provoke a quarrel (always in private); effectively end communication. Brand the activists as trouble-makers.
7. Cultivate a tame group of parents.  Make it obvious that there is a split in the community.
8. Let your staff know you are standing between them and a bunch of meddlers.  They’ll get the idea.

Parent Advisory Councils in every school was the goal of a new School Act in BC in 1989. This came about after a two-year public process examining the education system (Royal Commission or Sullivan Commission). Home schooling was also brought to the fore (though never illegal) by more expansive regulations A new Independent School Act further validated the growth of private and independent schools. My involvement in an earlier round of public discussion, “Let’s Talk About Schools” in 1984-5 foreshadowed future developments. My presentations highlighted the following: - School Boards are an outdated form of education delivery (Public Interest, Fall 1984) - School-based management as modeled in private schools should prevail - Return parents to a central role in education decision-making. Have mandated parent advisory councils in each and every school. - Enhance options so that parents can choose from a much wider range of choices in the public school system, in the independent system and other styles that are now emerging, for example, home education. Parents are the missing link in education because the current top-down management is run by pedagogues and ideologues.

[From Education Advisory #11, Feb. 1982. These are suggestions made 25 years ago about how parent groups can be meaningfully involved in their schools. Hopefully, most of these points apply today. Comments?]

A parent group can initiate, develop, help improve, co-sponsor with the school, a number of useful projects of value to students, parents and school.

1. Block parent program
2. Call-back program
3. School directory
4. School handbook
5. Parent newsletter, separate from school newsletter
6. Review of school philosophy, goals, programs
7. Budget input on school discretionary funds
8. Suggest parent involvement in school in-service programs, especially if interesting speakers invited
9. Ensure trustees know your school; attend school board meetings
10. Parent library
11. Encourage parent attendance at education workshops
12. Participate in district’s umbrella group (or help form one)
13. Meaningful meetings
14. Review junk/nutritious food ratio in cafeteria
15. Review of parent group’s goals, philosophy
16. Student scholarships, traditional and innovative awards
17. Displays of student work, in school and community
18. Parent volunteer program
19. Parent questionnaire
20. Writing style and standards handbook

PARENT ADVISORY COUNCILS A long history brings us to the year 2007 when parent advisory councils in BC schools are now more the norm than the exception. Provincial legislation authorizes their existence in public schools when parents organize and apply to constitute such a group. When my children became of school age they were enrolled in  1972 in a Vancouver school in an innovative program, an open-area school which was an adaptation of exciting programs in England at that time. Many parents traveled great distances to bring their children here because they too endorsed the idea of informal learning with exceptional teachers. (The teachers had spent a year in England.)

Some of these parents were members of an activist parent group, CARE (Citizen Action to Reform Education) which I readily joined because on the whole we saw parents being excluded from the substance of education. The existing PTA groups, because they included teachers, did not meet our group’s interests as they avoided curriculum and educational quality questions. However, in 1974, a research report on our school found a significant difference in performance between a control group and the students in our school. Other students were scoring “significantly better in reading, writing, and mathematics than did the pupils from the informal classes with an innovative program”. That spurred us, in 1975, to apply and receive a grant from the Secretary of State for a 3-year project:

• To provide a consumer advisory service in education
• To help equip parents with the information, skills, and confidence to effectively guide their children’s education
• To encourage public involvement in the planning and delivery of educational services
• To report on important issues and research findings in education
• To generally advance the cause of education in an open society

Thus, Education Advisory was born. We held workshops, published newsletters and handbooks and distributed them across the province to parent groups. We generally tried to advance the rationale, models, skills and impetus for greater involvement of parents in their children’s education. I was the coordinator of this project, and as funding dried up, I continued on a voluntary basis for many years. My background included a teaching certificate, BA with a major in psychology, and work in youth counselling and psychological testing. We were never anti-teacher, but were critical of the system. Some of our member parents and friends were themselves teachers. Our feedback and research told us it was an unaware and sometimes defensive system which conspired to exclude parents from meaningful involvement. Our workshops and materials focused on developing skills and awareness. Our briefs and presentations sought parent involvement in developing criteria for principal selection, better teacher preparation for parent involvement, and structures for parental voice in school decision-making. If you read my blog so far, you will see that what I am doing now is downloading a lot of past material from Education Advisory and my own independent efforts. I recently retired from the work force, and as I clean house, I recognize that a lot of this material is too valuable to throw out. It might provide some memory and archives of the struggles parents went through in those days. There is no need to re-invent the wheel! I sure wish I had access to this kind of material when I was a young parent. Hopefully, it can be of help to current parents. I will continue posting material as I come across it, but would now welcome comments as to whether parents are indeed genuinely and effectively involved in their children’s education. How do they feel about themselves individually and about the legislation and machinery that have been set up for parent involvement?