East Valley : 250 Complete Course in Parent Education

About 250 parents from North Hollywood graduated Monday night from a six-week parent education and training course held at Fair Avenue Elementary School in North Hollywood. “We learned a great deal,” said Leticia Toledo, 35, mother of two. “The biggest thing: We learned how to give respect to our children, and we learned that we should be more involved in their schools.”

The parents attended classes on building self-esteem, working within the school system, using discipline in the home, detecting and preventing drug abuse at home and at school and making college and career decisions.

Fair Avenue Elementary School Principal Maxine Matlen said: “We’ve had a lot of activities that involved parents, but this one, by far, had the highest turnout.”

Making the classes accessible and convenient to working parents was a priority, Matlen said. Classes, taught in English and Spanish, were offered in the morning and evening, and child care was provided. In addition, teachers phoned individuals enrolled in their classes at home and reminded them to come.

“We’re working hard to increase parent involvement,” Matlen said. “And this is a good way to do it. We’re also trying to project a positive image of things happening at our school.”

Fair Avenue is one of 29 reform-oriented LEARN schools in Los Angeles. LEARN--which stands for Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now--schools have some independence from school district policies in areas such as curriculum and budgets.

The parenting courses were conducted by the Los Angeles Parent Institute for Quality Education, an L.A. agency that works to encourage parents and schools to become partners in education.

Monday’s graduation was held at Sun Valley Middle School.