Parental Involvement Is L.A. Unified’s Lesson Plan

Carolina Perez wasn’t always heavily involved in her son’s education.

“I was blind. I believed so much in the system. I thought it was working,” she said Saturday during a Los Angeles Unified School District-sponsored conference on parental involvement at the Radisson Valley Center Hotel.

But Perez became interested in 13-year-old son Milton Ayala’s schooling when teachers couldn’t decide whether he had a speech problem or Attention Deficit Disorder. Now, Perez heads a parent council at San Fernando Elementary School.

More attention needs to be focused on eliminating communication barriers between parents and teachers, said Perez, 39, of San Fernando. “If [instructors] see we’re not educated academically, they think we’re not smart enough to help our kids,” she said during a workshop on special education services. Schools and their parent councils also can do a better job informing more parents about similar workshops, she said.

About 200 parents whose children attend schools in four LAUSD Valley campus clusters attended Saturday’s event, which featured nine workshops. Some topics were controversial, like the new Academic Performance Index, which breaks out student scores by school and race and ethnic groups.

Organizers expected a higher turnout but said the event coincided with Cinco de Mayo.

Those who did show up had a lot on their minds and were eager to share what they learned with other parents.

“I learned how to open doors at a school and how to speak to a principal. Being positive you achieve things,” said Margarita Lopez, 38, of North Hills. “We have to make the change at home.”

Sandra Renteria, a parent liaison coordinator at the district’s Parent Community Services Branch, encouraged parents in her workshop, mostly Latinas, to be on top of their children’s schooling and to know their rights. She said they should feel free to sit in their children’s classes to observe teachers’ performances. They also should document any school shortcomings in writing, Renteria said.

“As Latinos, we look at [teachers and administrators] as if they’re God and they know it all,” which is a mistake, Renteria said. “If the parent doesn’t respond in writing, it doesn’t have any meaning.

“Nobody knows your child better than yourself,” Renteria added. “I always tell parents, ‘Don’t wait. If you think something’s going wrong, call the teacher and make an appointment. And if not, speak to the principal.’ You can negotiate and make things happen if you want to.”

During a workshop about the Academic Performance Index, parents learned how the state uses that newly created standard to rank schools and to judge whether schools are making adequate progress and can be eligible for financial rewards. Schools that fail to meet improvement targets could have remedies forced on them or even face takeover by the state. Last year’s index was based on Stanford 9 test scores.

Warren G. Mason, an LAUSD Kennedy/Monroe cluster administrator, encouraged parents to ask schools to show them their index scores and how the data also are categorized by race and ethnic groups.

But Blanca Molina, a parent volunteer at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies in Reseda, said there shouldn’t be scores for different ethnicities. “It doesn’t seem right. It’s a form of discrimination,” said Molina of Reseda.

Mason defended keeping that data collection. “If you have groups that aren’t performing, you have to do something to bring all the groups up,” he said, adding that schools where only one group was performing well could misrepresent its overall progress.

“We have to come up with a plan of action to really show we’re improving our API scores,” Mason said. “Otherwise, we’re going to have problems.”