D&C story:A group elected to represent Rochester School District parents will be dissolved when its term expires this summer after nonparents took it off course, school district officials say, and a new council made up solely of district parents will be formed to replace it.
District officials say the current Parent Council came to be dominated by a few outspoken activists, some of whom were not district parents or even city residents. But those being expelled say the district is suppressing a legitimate voice capable of speaking truth to power, and is installing a group of hand-picked lackeys in its place.
For school district leaders, remaking the Parent Council with new guidelines solves an obvious problem.
"If you're going to represent the parents, you're going to have to be a district parent," said school district spokesman Tom Petronio.
That hasn't been true in the past. But under new bylaws governing Rochester School District's Parent Council, one representative from each school will be selected by principals and parent liaisons from existing school parent organizations.
Those chosen must be parents or guardians of district students and live in the city. They also can't be employed by or have a contractualfinancial relationship with the district.
Several members of the current Parent Council, a group of about 45 people chosen during elections at schools in early 2009, are no longer eligible.
The new Parent Council, like the old one, will meet monthly. District staff will attend the meetings, and the group is intended to "give parents a voice," according to Gladys Pedraza-Burgos, the district's chief of youth development and family services.
"They would bring concerns and issues to us," she said. They also would bring issues from their schools to the council and report back.
The changes pit the district against a handful of well-known school activists and advocates who have long worked to make schools better, sometimes leveling fierce public criticisms.
Among them is Charlie Richardson, a regular fixture at school board meetings and a vocal advocate for a litany of major and minor educational policy issues. Richardson is not a district parent and lives in Pittsford, and thus will no longer be allowed to serve on the Parent Council.
"The original idea was to have community members also, because the parents were reluctant to go up against the principals and the board," said Richardson. He said he believes the changes are being made to weaken the council.
Pedraza-Burgos said the new rules set the group up for success and better align with district policy. Besides which, she said, Richardson and others with long histories with the district "scared off some of our parents."
The council started with 48 members, she said. By the end, only a dozen or so were coming to meetings. "And you can guess who those dozen were. Not a lot of parents."
Pedraza-Burgos said the district called those who'd stopped showing up for meetings. "A lot of it had to do with the dynamics of these community activists. We had to listen to what people were saying."
"I believe it got derailed — I'm not sure what the reason was for it," said parent Candice Lucas, who plans to continue to serve on the forum next year, representing School 12 where her children are in grades five and six.
"I think there were some challenges in the way it was set up," Lucas said. She said she supports the push for more parents on the council but believes there is and should be a role for community members who have experience dealing with the district.
The district, however, has already committed to the new structure.
"It's a truer parent voice because it's coming directly from that school," said Dorothy Evans-Flaherty, the district's recently hired director of parent engagement.
Other prominent activists who won't be allowed to continue on the parent council include Glenny Williams, who doesn't have a child in the district, and Howard Eagle.
"I've got a problem with that, because we need parents and community working together," said Eagle, who has children at two district schools and is a retired district teacher. Pedraza-Burgos said the district already has representatives from the schools Eagle would be eligible to represent.
"Some people in the Parent Council believed all along that the district didn't want anything they couldn't control," Eagle said.
Who should serve?Parent involvement in district schools has long been a sticking point in Rochester, and other attempts to create advisory groups made up of parents and community members have met with varying results over the years. Federal laws such as No Child Left Behind and Title I require parental involvement efforts as conditions for receiving federal money.
"It used to be called parent and community involvement, and now it's just parent engagement," said Alan Whitcomb, who has been involved with similar groups for years and stands to lose his seat on the Parent Council because he doesn't have a child in the district.
"The new process, I think, is downgrading the Parent Council in terms of importance," Whitcomb said.
The parents that principals might choose to serve — those who are strong advocates at the school level — won't necessarily be those best equipped to deal with districtwide issues, he said.
He agreed, however, that the current Parent Council has not been particularly successful.
"The story I've heard is that they spent the entire eight months of their career together developing bylaws," said School of the Arts parent Cheryl Marshall, who is not on the Parent Council but is active in the school's Parent/Teacher/Student Association. "The district spent the next 60 days revising them."
That's true, Petronio said, and the district accepts blame for the current council's wasted time and effort.
"I think the process was a flawed one, the whole way it was handled by the district," Petronio said. "It wasn't through the fault of these people. We allowed that to happen."
He said the district is allowing the current Parent Council to serve out the rest of its term "as a courtesy."
NRAMOS@DemocratandChronicle.com
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Topic: District-Wide Parent Council??? (Read 299 times)