‘Graduate Course’ Helps People Earn A’s in Parenting

The aging auditorium at Pio Pico Elementary School was sweltering. The kids--and there were swarms of them--were practically bouncing off the walls. Meanwhile, their parents fidgeted and gabbed as they sat in rows of folding metal chairs.

It was graduation night, and there was no shortage of excitement.

But this was no ordinary commencement. In this one, the parents were collecting the diplomas. As they stepped forward one by one, those in the audience waved their arms over their heads, swayed their bodies and sang: “We are all equal. There is no race or color. Together, we will find a smile, peace and love.”

The more than 100 parents who gathered at Pio Pico--located in an immigrant, working-class part of Mid-City L.A.--were graduating from a six-week program intended to get them more involved in their children’s studies. In all, more than 7,000 parents of various ethnicities have completed the courses since the program was approved last year by L.A. school officials with funds from World Vision, the Monrovia-based Christian relief and development agency.

Yes, the 640,000-student district is facing enormous problems and challenges. But Kerry Paynes, Sinoah Walker, Jose Lopez, Sandra Baeza, Carlos Romero and the other Pio Pico parents aren’t discouraged because they’ve learned how to fill the void.

“What kind of a parent am I if I don’t take an interest?” asks Lopez, the father of four school-age youngsters. He answered his own question without missing a beat: “Not a very good one.”

The idea behind the Pio Pico graduation is simple. If more parents get more involved with their youngsters’ schoolwork, perhaps fewer students will drop out, a problem that has vexed Latinos for years. At the same time, it is hoped that the program will create strong family bonds, helping to detour kids from joining street gangs, which offer a sense of belonging in the absence of attentive parents.

*

The Parent Institute for Quality Education, helped by a $450,000 grant from World Vision, offers courses on topics ranging from how to communicate with teachers to how to avoid gangs to how to prepare a youngster for college.

The program was conceived by Vahac Mardirosian, a Baptist minister who has long been critical of local school officials for failing to make education more relevant to the area’s many Latino students. Back in 1969, Mardirosian, who was raised by his Armenian parents in Tijuana, argued that it was a lack of respect and understanding by school officials for Mexican-American educational needs that prompted hundreds of Chicano students to strike five Eastside high schools in protest.

He ran for the school board in 1979 but was defeated by conservative incumbent Richard Ferraro. Mardirosian later returned to the San Diego area, where he began a parenting program that earned high marks.

Although Mardirosian’s parenting classes have spread to Northern California, the Los Angeles program is his most ambitious project to date.

There’s a touch of irony in all this because school officials years ago resisted many of the very ideas from Mardirosian that they are embracing today. Back then, they were viewed as too radical. But today’s expanding Latino enrollment--and the problems that can follow from such a large immigrant population--forced a rethinking of old attitudes by district officials.

“The only way change will occur,” Mardirosian says, “is when thousands of parents come to the schools and say, ‘I want what’s best for my children. What can I do to help?’ ”

It’s too early to gauge the effect of the classes but the parents who jammed Pio Pico’s auditorium seemed determined to succeed. Many of them proudly showed their “diplomas,” noting that they had achieved 100% attendance during the six weeks.

“I can show my kids that I went to school for them,” Iriz Diaz says. “I hope they appreciate it.”

Sinoah Walker says she got involved out of concern for her 7-year-old son, Dakkar. She says he’s “an ‘A’ student who is not applying himself. . . . I want him to do better.”

For Jose Lopez, who would like to move his family away from the Mid-City area, a change of scenery won’t make any difference if his children don’t excel in school. “It won’t make any difference where we live,” he says, “if they get in trouble.”

*

The behemoth L.A. district is facing daunting problems educating its charges, and this program won’t solve all of its ills. But it was heartening to see Latino, African-American and Asian parents at Pio Pico agreeing to do something, anything, beyond just mouthing the words: “I want my kid to get more smarts than me.”