Putting the Children First : Tipper Gore Touts Parental Involvement at Santa Ana School

For an instant, under the glare of media lights, the 24-year-old single mother in a white T-shirt and black jeans connected with Tipper Gore, who was visiting her son’s school Wednesday morning.

“One of my major sacrifices?” Erika Santamaria, an assembly line worker, asked Vice President Al Gore’s wife. “I work graveyard shift. I get off at 6:30 in the morning. I come to all the [school] meetings. My son is only in kindergarten, but I am starting to look out for him now.”

That, said Gore, is exactly the type of parental involvement American schools need.

Gore stopped at Washington Elementary School as part of a five-city Western tour that stressed the importance of parental involvement in children’s lives. Her visit was financed by Clinton-Gore campaign funds.

Later, in an interview, Gore, 47, said she and her husband have always found time to be involved in their children’s schools. The Gores have three daughters and a son, who range in age from 13 to 22.

These days, Gore said, she and her husband instruct their aides to plan meetings around the soccer and lacrosse games of their 17-year-old daughter, Sarah.

“Al will leave the [White House] west wing . . . and be zipped to the game, cheering them on from the sidelines, and then we go back to work,” said Gore, who goes in-line skating with her children. “You’re never too, quote-unquote, important to neglect your children.”

On the Santa Ana campus, Gore met with a group of 40 fourth- and fifth-grade students and with the school’s Parent Institute for Quality Education. The institute sponsors workshops where parents learn how to work with schools and motivate their children.

“I think what’s going on here is very, very important, and is a model for other schools,” Gore told the students. “Not only for Santa Ana . . . but for the whole country.”

Gore said she will take the students’ and parents’ thoughts back to Washington, and will hold up the parent institute as an example in her speeches across the country.

“Some people think that you just instantaneously know how to be a parent, but it’s really something that you learn . . . the way they develop and grow, and how they learn at 18 months versus 2 years,” Gore said.

Gore, a drummer in high school for an all-girl rock band called the Wildcats, is perhaps best known for her campaign in the mid-1980s against “porn rock” and her efforts to encourage the voluntary use of warning labels for explicit lyrics.

Gore, who has a master’s degree in psychology, now works on issues such as education and mental health for the Clinton administration.

Wednesday, Gore spent more than an hour at the school, which has 1,100 students, many of whom are from low-income homes. The school had been plagued by low parental involvement, but the institute has turned that around. More than 80 parents now attend its weekly meetings.

A first- and second-grade class presented Gore with an envelope full of Valentine’s Day cards addressed “Para Sra. Gore” (For Mrs. Gore)--but not before a Secret Service agent poked through them.

Those weren’t her only valentines. Earlier that morning, Gore received a special delivery from the vice president--a heart-shaped brooch and a book of Shakespearean sonnets.

Fifth-grader Saul Villela, 10, said he also had a Valentine’s Day to remember.

“I was happy,” he said, “because [Gore] listened to me.”