Westminster School Officials Make ‘House Calls’

Two children stood outside the door of Maria Ramirez’s small Westminster apartment and peered inside, where they saw Anderson School principal Gail Borowick, a familiar face to kids who attend the nearby school.

Neighbors stared out their windows, too.

“She’s the principal, and if she’s here, they feel she really cares,” said Sonia Martinez, an interpreter for the Westminister School District who accompanied Borowick into this predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood to help set up a meeting for parents.

Most of the parents who live here have never been inside their children’s school. So educators like Borowick are making house calls.

The district made its first “house call” in April at the home of Ofelia Fernandez. And tonight, a second will be made to the home of Maria Ramirez, who recently met with Borowick to work out details. The informal gathering will be led by Sharon Kerbow, a drug prevention counselor, and psychotherapist Rufino Mora.

District officials say they have found that some Spanish-speaking parents have a difficult time attending school events or scheduling time with their child’s teacher because of long work days, lack of transportation and limited English skills.

“Meanwhile, we have teachers, counselors and aides who are really anxious to help,” Kerbow said.

About 15 to 20 parents are expected to attend tonight’s meeting. The discussion will be in Spanish. If the meetings are successful, they will be held next year in other areas of the district, according to Kerbow.

“Basically, we determined that parent education needed to be a priority,” she said. “We tried having parent education nights, but the turnout wasn’t that great. We started saying, ‘I think we need to go out to the parents.’ ”

The meetings are designed to give parents a chance to talk about their children’s schoolwork or to discuss family or neighborhood problems, she said.

“We are concentrating on the apartment buildings that are across the street from two of our schools that are in gang areas,” Kerbow said. “We felt these were high-risk areas.”

The first meeting was aimed at parents of children who attend Finley School. Cathy Goldman, a bilingual teacher at Finley, was instrumental in putting the event together.

“There were at least 25 parents in this little bitty living room,” Goldman said. “I just felt like my heart was so warm that night. The parents responded so well.”

The purpose of the meeting, according to Hodge Hill, Finley principal, was to connect with parents.

“Parents have a difficult time coming to school because it is an unknown,” says Hill, who attended the event along with other school district officials. “So, we asked one of our parents if she would host it in her house. She called friends and neighbors, and we met with the people in this one apartment complex. You could tell from the parents’ reaction that they were really into what was happening.”

One of the people who helped contribute to the success of that first meeting was Rufino Mora, a Santa Ana psychotherapist who serves as a consultant to the Westminster School District. Mora, who spoke to the group in Spanish, will deliver a similar message tonight at Maria Ramirez’s apartment.

“I talk a lot about communication in the family, and about the roles of mothers and fathers,” he said. “I come down pretty hard on the fathers who have a macho attitude that (child rearing) is not my responsibility. I tell them it is not just the wife’s responsibility. Because I’m Hispanic and I’m a professional--and I’m not small, I’m 6-2 and weigh 210 pounds--I can get it across.”

Children are more motivated, Mora said, if they see the mother and father participating in parenting together. “I tell the dads, ‘Give that child 10 minutes of undivided attention every day.’ It is the school’s responsibility to educate the child, but it is the mother’s and father’s responsibility to raise the child.”

Mora compared the neighborhood meetings to house calls once made by the family doctor.

“You are showing you have interest enough to go to their homes,” he said. “It brings down the walls of defense.”

Kerbow hopes the house calls will help develop a real relationship between parents and educators.

“When you share things like homes, when parents know you are trying to help them, they open up,” she said. “It is very hard to work with a child without working with the family. The more teachers know about families, the easier it is to work with that child.”

The house calls will also help encourage parents to visit their child’s school, Hill said. “We are trying to open up avenues where parents will feel more comfortable coming into the classroom.”

Both Hill and Kerbow acknowledge that parent involvement is important in every community in the district.

“We are going to get heat from people saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing this with everybody?’ ” Kerbow said. But she said the same approach will not work with everyone.

“You have to treat each culture differently,” said Kerbow, who pointed out that Westminster School District serves a diverse population that includes a high percentage of Latino and Vietnamese families.

House calls would not go over well with the Vietnamese community, she said, because Vietnamese parents prefer meetings in cultural centers or public meeting places, not in individual homes.

Loc Nguyen, program coordinator for the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., agrees that many Vietnamese are reluctant to admit strangers into their homes.

“Especially the newcomer, they don’t want the stranger or the government employee or people outside to come visit their family or their home because in the past they are afraid of the government. The good way, I think, is to phone and invite them to the (community) center.”

When the school district held such a meeting last year, it was a big success. “Last year we went into Little Saigon and had a meeting in the community center,” Kerbow said. “We had over 100 parents.”

The important thing, she said, is coming up with a program that works.

“You have to respect each culture, and we are doing different outreaches for them,” she said. “I am sure all parents want the best for their children, but different cultures do things in a different way.”