Cincinnati Public Schools is welcoming a new enthusiasm for parental involvement that is taking parents’ investment in student achievement to a higher level.
Examples include a parent who is helping her child’s school improve students’ success in mathematics, a parent who is creating enrichment opportunities for gifted children, and two parents who are linking families with the best resources for children with special needs.
These parents’ involvement began as ways to help their own children’s educations and grew into projects that now are benefiting many children — as well as sparking involvement from other parents. Their strongest contribution may be the examples they are setting of great parental involvement.
"If there are any roadblocks to parents getting involved in their children’s education, they can be overcome more easily by hearing from other parents,” said Zakia McKinney, executive director of Parents for Public Schools of Greater Cincinnati (PPSGC), which sponsors the Parent Leadership Institute.
The institute teaches parents the skills they can use to impact academic achievement in their children’s schools. Funded through the Greater Cincinnati Foundation and now the United Way — Ohio PIRC Grant, the institute aims to show parents how to turn information and data into projects that can help students learn. Each graduate receives $250 to build a team and launch an in-school project that identifies a need and a way to fulfill it.
Two institute graduates, Lori Santel and Debra Devlin, worked together on a project aimed at providing training and services for parents of children with disabilities. The project is launched and continues to expand; under way so far is the creation of an extensive list of resources available to parents locally, statewide and nationally for students with disabilities. They will open a Parent Center soon at the School for Creative and Performing Arts and have collected resource kits at Sands Montessori for parents to use at home. In the future, Santel and Devlin want to create a two-hour training session to teach parents how to advocate for themselves and their children.
The institute helped them focus on how they could solve the problems they were encountering and knew other parents were struggling with, too.
“The institute really empowers parents to advocate on the level of the administrators and teachers,” Santel said. “It teaches skills that can help throughout your life. You can utilize your talents at many levels. The Parent Leadership Institute is a good starting point for getting involved.”
Audrey Holtzman, a graduate who now is a Parent Coach with the institute, crafted her project around finding ways to bring more gifted programming to North Avondale Montessori. The institute taught her how to organize groups and to network to get projects accomplished. Her successes, so far, include parents coordinating a Brain Bowl quiz game and committing to the school’s participation this year in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
“I wanted to get other parents involved, too, because you realize that the teachers and the district can’t do it all,’’ Holtzman said.
Other examples of projects launched by institute graduates include Janet Albright-Willis’ Family Math Night at Rees E. Price Academy, aimed at showing parents ways they can help children improve math achievement; and Pamela Carter’s Parent Support Group at Roberts Paideia Academy, which started a child-development group to fill a need for before- and after-school child care.
“Parent involvement — that’s the key,” Carter said. “As parents, our obligation is to make sure our children get what they need. We have power in our numbers. Schools can only do so much. You have to be a major part of your child’s education.”