Perhaps Parent of the Year Can Figure Out Higher Math

I’ll bet many of you have done this too: Sometimes when my 4-year-old daughter and my 13-year-old son are asleep, I go to their rooms just to look at them. They seem so loving and at peace. For a moment I forget they’re only recharging their batteries to drive me wild the next day.

I had parenthood all figured out. I knew my children would say the cutest things. I knew teaching my son to ride a bicycle would be one of my life’s greatest moments. (It was.) There would be times I’d be challenged, I knew, and sometimes I’d have to say no to them, for their own good.

What I was not prepared for was algebra. Of all the advice my wife and I received when we started having children, no one told us that junior high algebra would some day devour our lives.

So I was impressed when the Santa Ana Unified School District’s board announced that this coming Sunday it will honor Parents’ Day. It’s actually a national day set by Congress two years ago, but nobody remembers it until someone like the school district brings it up. The district will even come up later with a “Parent of the Year.”

I want to meet the winner. Maybe she--or he--can give me some advice as my son prepares for high school. Actually, this Parents’ Day thing got me thinking. Maybe we also need to have a “Bad Parent of the Year,” to highlight those parents who don’t do a lick to encourage their children.

Recently a summer school teacher at Loara High School in Anaheim showed me the long list of students either failing or getting a “D” in his class. “These are the parents I’d like to hear from--the parents of these kids,” he told me. “But none of those parents ever come in.”

The Santa Ana Unified School District has planned a whole week of activities leading up to Parents’ Day. But it has done much more than that: It sent a directive to its school principals to come up with projects that emphasize parent involvement.

Says Kathy Sabine, principal at Heninger Elementary School in Santa Ana: “If students don’t get reinforcement from their parents, they’ll seek it from their peers.”

She eased my conscience a little about my inability to help my son with algebra: “Provide him a work place for his homework, let him know that it must come first before play time. That reinforces to him that you care, that his future means something to you.”

Winner Anyway: Never mind that Placentia’s Janet Evans didn’t make it to the finals in her swimming event in Atlanta on Monday. The gold medal champion from two previous Olympics is having a great time anyway. She got to hand the torch to Muhammad Ali in front of a billion people last Friday night. Then on Saturday, 14-year-old Amanda Beard of Irvine told the world that Evans is a gold medal roommate. Here’s what Beard told NBC about rooming with Evans:

“Janet Evans is like my, like a sweetheart. I love her so much. And like, rooming with her has been a wonderful experience. If I ever had to go to another place, I would want her in my room because she is just fantastic. She knows what she is doing. She did all my laundry for me and she folded all my clothes. She’s a pretty good roommate.”

My son can’t swim as fast as silver medal winner Beard. But he’s got her beat in using the word “like” in a single sentence. We tried to break him of the habit until we discovered it’s, like, the favorite word of nearly every student in his school.

Traffic Report: Notes from my wife’s traffic school session at North Municipal Court in Fullerton on Saturday:

The traffic instructor says his favorite citation is to nail Orange County motorists for illegal use of the freeway carpool lane. Not only is that a $271 fine, but if you spot a patrol car and figure you’ll slip out of the carpool lane before the officer spots you first, it’s another $271 if you cross the lane’s double yellow line. Further note: You can get a ticket for driving the legal limit in the far left “fast lane.” The law is this: You’re a violator if you’re doing anything to cause an unsafe condition on the road. So if you’re driving 65 mph. in the fast lane just to teach those driving 80 to slow down, you’re the one they’re likely to pull over.

Most offensive driver the instructor ever stopped: A woman reading a novel while sailing along on the freeway.

Super Fan: Golden West College had planned to run the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” with less than a full orchestra. Money was the problem. But when an anonymous donor in Newport Beach heard about it, he sent along $10,000 to help out. Wrote the donor: “This outstanding young cast deserves to have an outstanding orchestra.”

The musical continues on Thursday through Sunday nights, through Aug. 10--and with full orchestra.

Wrap-Up: At Anaheim’s Ball Junior High School graduation in June, a poem called “Unity” (author unknown) was included on the printed program. It was about a teacher and a parent, and it closed like this:

“Each agreed he would have failed

“If he had worked alone.

“For behind the parent stood the school,

“And behind the teacher, the home.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com