New PTA Group Sparks Volunteerism : Parents Pitch In to Turn Lincoln High Around

Katie Smith and Walter Kudumu know firsthand what hundreds of educators and community leaders are finding out this week at a national conference in San Diego on ways to improve parent involvement in public schools.

The two Southeast San Diego residents are among many parents attempting to help turn around Lincoln High School, long a symbol of the city’s black community but one that, until this school year began, was one of the most troubled in the district.

For the first time in 13 years, Lincoln has an active Parent-Teacher Assn. (PTA) group. A school administrator spends her entire day working with parents, calling them about Lincoln’s new academic offerings, inviting them to the school’s community coffee room, asking whether they will volunteer their time in a class or extracurricular activity.

The school had its first college night ever last month, a result of collaboration between its new principal, its teachers and parents.

Parents even participate in the school’s twice-weekly reading sessions, at which the entire school--from students to office employees--spends 30 minutes each Monday and Tuesday morning reading whatever they want to in a campuswide effort to improve reading skills.

“There’s an enthusiasm and attitude around Lincoln today that has been missing for a long time . . . that translates into better student attendance and a lot of other things, such as a safer school too,” said Kudumu, a San Diego landscaper who has fought for better schools in Southeast for several years.

Lincoln’s student body--9th- through 12th-graders--has grown by several hundred since September as area parents who have been busing their children across town to other schools have become willing to consider an improved Lincoln curriculum.

The first conference of the National Institute for Parent Involvement in Education is being held in San Diego this week. Sessions range from ways to encourage harried single parents to participate in school life to training teachers to become more receptive to parents showing up at the schoolhouse door.

Experimental Programs

“Research and experience have shown that children are more successful in school when their parents are involved with their learning,” said Katie Klumpp, head of a local San Diego PTA effort to develop more parent interaction with schools, especially among under-represented ethnic groups in inner-city urban schools.

Klumpp, using a grant from the national PTA, is interviewing families to find out what they would like a PTA to do. The San Diego Unified School District also has a variety of experimental programs under way, including classes for parents of elementary students in several multi-ethnic mid-city schools to explain what happens to the children and how the parents can help.

“The schools need to make the (initial) approach to parents,” said Klumpp, who has worked with the Lincoln parents as well. “The schools have the resources to do so, and the key is the principal. At a lot of schools, the parents are not really welcome . . . part of that being that a lot of teachers have never been prepared for teacher interaction, so it becomes an issue of their security as professionals.”

The effort at Lincoln began with the appointment of a new principal, Ruby Cremaschi-Schwimmer, together with more than $700,000 in special funds to overhaul the curriculum and repair the battered school’s graffiti-marked walls and broken windows.

Full-Time Recruiter

“She assigned me full-time to recruit parents,” said Lillie Trowsdell, an administrator at Lincoln. “I’ve been calling parents, asking them to come up, to volunteer.” For those parents who work, meetings about the school are held in the late afternoon or early evening.

Trowsdell, whose children attended Lincoln, said that no one ever called her about parent involvement when they were in school.

“A lot of parents were surprised when we started calling,” said Smith, who teaches kindergarten at Hamilton Elementary School. “I’ve told them that if they are concerned about their kids, they should go to the school and see what is going on. We’re getting more community pride, and we’re putting the kids on an academic and social high.”

Lincoln is about 70% black, but it does have significant numbers of Latino and Indochinese students, whose parents Trowsdell has contacted as well.

“The Laotian parents had never been asked ever to come to the school, and they responded enthusiastically to a request to help out with a pot luck night,” Trowsdell said.

She said the principal has made it clear to teachers that parent involvement is going to be a permanent part of the new Lincoln. “I think we need four or five years to really complete a turnaround,” she said.