CAN THE PTA GET A PASSING GRADE?

When the mothers who would become the Belvedere Elementary PTA finished drafting the bylaws for their new chapter this year, they asked Principal Eva Garcia to join them in the auditorium. You need to agree on a date when we can elect our officers, they told her, as they rocked their babies and distracted their toddlers.

“Do you really want to do this?” Garcia asked. “I want to make sure there’s a real commitment. I don’t want to start something and then have it become a failure.” Heads nodded; they were in.

But two weeks later, with many of the same women gathered at the East Los Angeles school, that commitment seemed to be ebbing fast. PTA rules require at least 11 dues-paying members to form a chapter and elect officers, but only eight parents at this largely poor, largely Latino school had paid the $5 fee. When a representative from the PTA’s downtown office asked whether anyone else wanted to sign up, for several awkward minutes the only sound in the auditorium came from a squeaky stroller being rolled back and forth to calm a restless baby. Then two mothers came forward with $5 bills. They had 10. Finally, Belvedere’s assistant principal, Robert Martinez, pulled out his wallet, became the 11th member, and the elections got underway. A less than roaring start. When the meeting ended, the new Belvedere PTA had its first president in many years, a shyly beaming Veronica Salazar, a mother of two studying for her teaching credential.

Los Angeles Unified School District leaders insist that parental involvement is a key component of student success, and until the 1980s, the Parent Teacher Assn. had a near-monopoly on this mission--nationally and locally. But where the PTA was once a powerful presence, with chapters at most Los Angeles schools, the organization has fallen on hard times, with only about one-third of the district’s campuses able to recruit enough parents to sustain a chapter.

The easy explanation is that today’s working mothers aren’t available to clean paintbrushes during the day, as housewives were in decades past, and they are too bushed at night to attend planning meetings for the holiday pageant. But the roots of the PTA’s current troubles are more complicated than that. Many immigrant parents such as some of those at Belvedere come from countries without a strong tradition of school volunteerism. In addition, 1978’s Proposition 13 sharply cut into school revenues, compelling parents at many schools to concentrate their energies on fund-raising booster clubs to replace services--such as art teachers and regular maintenance--that earlier generations took for granted. These clubs that have sprung up on wealthier campuses have eclipsed the PTA. Every dollar they raise stays on campus while a big chunk of the money that PTA parents raise must be distributed among regional, state and national offices.

The LAUSD’s stubbornly low test scores and its mantra of parental involvement continue to draw extraordinarily dedicated parents to the PTA, giving rise to cautious talk of an eventual comeback. Yet at schools like Belvedere, the PTA is struggling just to gain traction. Is there a future in Los Angeles for the organization that was ubiquitous on campus in the era before blackboards became whiteboards and recess became nutrition?

The PTA is the nation’s oldest and largest volunteer child advocacy organization. Founded in 1897 as the National Congress of Mothers, its mission was to promote the education and welfare of all children--a mission that has not changed. Along with marshaling volunteers and raising money in local schools, the PTA has taken the lead in addressing child welfare issues. In the 1950s, it helped organize the testing of the polio vaccine and the mass inoculation of schoolchildren. In the ‘60s, the PTA opposed tobacco advertising and produced public service messages on the dangers of drug use; in the ‘70s, the PTA created a school curriculum on the effects of media violence on children. Today, the PTA runs dental and vision clinics open to any needy LAUSD student. Last year, dentists and optometrists at these clinics served 7,000 children, filling cavities and fitting kids with proper eyeglasses.

Nationwide membership peaked about 40 years ago at 12 million. As the decline continued, the PTA, originally a white organization, merged with the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, prompting still more members to resign in protest. In the meantime, moms were heading to the office, school budgets were imploding and student populations, especially in big city districts, were becoming more diverse. By the early 1990s, though, national membership had begun to climb slightly, and it now hovers at 6.5 million, with 1 million in California.

In an increasingly pluralistic culture, the PTA’s “everychild, onevoice” credo and its notion of advocating for all children is seen by some as quaint and irrelevant. With budgets tight and test scores low, parents sometimes view their children as members of competing interest groups--poor students, gifted students, disabled students, minority students--whose educational success depends on their ability to corral funding. Moreover, despite the merger with its African American counterpart, the PTA still struggles against its 1950s caricature as a coffee-and-cookies club for white, middle-class women.

In Los Angeles and elsewhere, the PTA is providing Spanish and Korean translators at meetings and offering leadership training to parents with no experience and much timidity about wielding a gavel. These efforts are changing the face of the PTA but the fight for relevancy continues.

Pansy Wing remembers when Glassell Park Elementary School had a thriving PTA chapter; she was its president in 1968 when her children attended the mostly white school. But as the working-class community along the Los Angeles River in northeastern Los Angeles became home to growing numbers of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, the PTA “faded away.” Now it’s “faded back in.” Wing is one of a few Glassell old-timers helping new PTA leaders work with Principal Sandra Carter to engage parents and boost student performance.

They’re bumping up against obstacles common to many schools.

Rosaura Tirado led Glassell’s revived PTA last year. A small woman with a quiet, commanding bearing, Tirado returned to Los Angeles nearly four years ago from her native Mexico City so that her two young sons could go to school here. She took on the PTA presidency because, “for my child, it’s very important that I’m involved. I’m very concerned that when kids grow, they don’t go to the street.”

For Tirado, setting that example meant overseeing the annual events and continuing activities at this year-round school of 1,000 students. At the school’s holiday celebration last December, the PTA gave each of the 880 children in Track C a book. With nearly all of Glassell Park’s students poor enough to qualify for the school’s free breakfast and lunch program, that book was a significant gift--and a strong signal from the PTA about the importance of reading. On top of that, Tirado, who worked part time in a local library, showed up before the first bell three to four mornings a week to volunteer in Glassell’s reading lab, where kids get breakfast and one-on-one help.

But by last spring, Tirado had handed over her gavel to a new president in favor of returning to school herself. The turnover of parent volunteers, fueled by the PTA’s unrelenting time commitment, may mean that the PTA’s revival at Glassell and other schools will ultimately rest as heavily on principals as on a stable roster of parent leaders.

Principals such as Carter are key to the PTA’s success everywhere; they often work long extra hours to bring uncertain parents and sometimes-reluctant teachers together, and devote even more nights and lunch hours to help parent leaders plan school events and keep their records in the exacting order the PTA requires. In return, these principals get what the school district can’t give them: more adult eyes and ears on campus, extra hands in the classroom and the ability to mount new programs for kids. Yet neither Carter nor Eva Garcia at Belvedere can expect their bosses, the assistant superintendents who watch over their schools, to always reward these efforts. The school district evaluates administrators on six criteria; none directly addresses a principal’s efforts to involve parents.

Another barrier to a PTA revival is the disconnect between school-based chapters and the PTA’s federal, state and regional organizations. At Beethoven Elementary in Mar Vista, PTA President Sylvia Shelp has boosted membership and volunteers in part by reaching out to Latino parents, but she was initially flustered last year by a question from a father, one that has stumped local PTA leaders at many other schools:

“I’ve been paying these $5 dues for six years now,” the man said. “But I don’t know what we get for our money.”

“Well,” Shelp offered hesitantly, “the PTA runs dental and vision clinics downtown.” But her hesitation underscores a major problem for PTA chapters everywhere: Only a tiny portion of funds raised on school campuses stays there, and chapters have little or no control over how most money is spent. PTA dues are set at each school, with $5 typical across the district. Yet the organization’s rules require each school to ship $4 of every $5 off-campus, to be distributed among the national, state and regional offices. And 20% of all other funds that parents raise locally--through pancake breakfasts or Halloween carnivals--is siphoned off as well. This tithing to support the organization’s all-children credo is a very different message from the one that booster clubs or mandatory committees send, focused as they are exclusively on the needs of individual schools or one group of students.

Shelp’s initial unfamiliarity with the PTA’s spending is not uncommon for new chapter leaders busy with the logistics of back-to-school nights, drug abuse prevention campaigns and citizenship award contests. But her uncertainty points to a gulf between the PTA’s undisputed lobbying clout with lawmakers and its much weaker presence on urban school campuses, and also helps explain the group’s trouble getting parents’ attention these days.

Or the attention of school officials. Caprice Young, LAUSD board president, believes the “PTA is starting to become more of a player” in the district, and its mission to work on behalf of all kids is “more relevant than ever.” Lobbying by state and local PTA leaders was critical, she says, to the board’s adoption in 1999 of a 10-year program that aims to make art part of the core curriculum. “Nobody else talks about art, but the PTA decided we’re not willing to let it go.”

Others, however, see the PTA as still struggling for its niche. For former school board member Mark Slavkin, the all-children message is the problem. “Historically, it’s never been possible to speak for all anything--kids, grown-ups, teachers, whatever,” he says. “The PTA remains important, but like the Red Cross or the Rotary Club, the PTA may need to reinvent itself in a new era [with] new demographics.”

That reinvention is evident at 3rd Street Elementary School in Hancock Park, where the PTA has been a strong force for decades. In addition to children from the imposing landscaped homes nearby, 3rd Street draws the children of immigrants from dense apartment blocks not far away. Half of its students are Asian, most of them Korean and Korean American, and many of their parents struggle with English.

Cindy Yang recognizes herself in these parents and believes her job as 3rd Street’s co-PTA president is to reach out to them. Splitting the job of PTA president is not unusual but dividing the job, in essence, to serve different ethnic groups is less common.

Yang, with a new co-president, Katrina Braunsdorf, is starting her second year as co-president.

At first, Yang, the mother of two, said she found the idea of working with the PTA odd. Korean schools don’t generally rely on parent volunteers the way American schools do, but “I could see that this school needed my help.” When a child was nearly run over while darting between cars to get into the school, Yang pushed for a special drop-off lane. Now she and her helpers, decked out in fluorescent vests courtesy of PTA parents, direct traffic in front of 3rd Street most mornings starting at 7. She involves other Korean parents slowly, suggesting activities that don’t require fluent English, such as photocopying materials for teachers. Over time, she thinks that brief conversations with them on campus will lead to greater participation.

“She knows I’m here, I know she’s here,” Yang says, referring to a parent she is trying to get involved.

With other parents, she ladles on the guilt: “I tell them, ‘This country does something for you, you do something for them. You’re here every day dropping off your child, why don’t you spare 10 minutes?’ ”

Third Street’s annual Back-to-School Breakfast exemplifies the PTA’s creative approach to involving parents. Years back, 3rd Street switched its back-to-school event from early evening to early morning when it found that working parents who were dropping off their kids anyway were more likely to tour the classroom then than return to school after a long day. But the breakfast works only because the PTA officers, who lead the planning, can depend on a dozen hearty souls--including members of the school’s booster club--to show up as early as 5:30 a.m. to slice the bagels and sell grocery scrip and 3rd Street T-shirts. Says Laurie Block, last year’s booster club president, “We’re the right hand and [the PTA is] the left hand but we’re all part of the same body.”

That kind of collaboration seems to succeed at Beethoven as well, cemented by a tradition of interlocking officers; the president of that school’s booster club serves as the PTA vice president, and the PTA president serves as booster club vice president. Beethoven’s new library is testament to the power of that cross-pollenation. Renovation of the dreary room with its worn books was not an official PTA project, but without the PTA it would not have happened. Working together, the booster club and the PTA raised $35,000 over five years, a major undertaking for any school. A local nonprofit group, The Wonder of Reading, began construction last September and by early November, Beethoven children entered a brightly colored library with new carpeting, lots more space, a small amphitheater, Internet hookup and 700 new books.

There are other benefits to a strong PTA as well. Once a parent has committed to a leadership position, they are eligible for training by the PTA--and that training often transforms them into stronger advocates for their schools. Shelp and Tirado began their presidential terms by attending a daylong workshop run by regional PTA leaders. They learned how to use Robert’s Rules of Order, maintain financial records and foster better communication between parents and teachers. Belvedere’s Salazar attended similar training sessions. Each went home with literature about the state and national PTA and templates for writing bylaws and meeting notes. As women with little leadership experience, they left as well with confidence that they could coordinate classroom volunteers, organize after-school art classes, even plan a new library.

Leadership training and how-to manuals are important, but they don’t bridge the gap between the PTA’s state and national presence and its activities at local schools. The organization’s clout on the state and national stage is still formidable. “If you’re a lawmaker, you listen to what they have to say,” observes Beethoven’s principal, Anne Doublier. State and national PTA leaders on occasion urge parents to write letters in support of, for example, increased federal funding for public schools and against vouchers for private schools--two current priorities. But the PTA as a whole suffers because parents are understandably focused on improving their local school while state and national leaders have their eyes on larger policy battles.

For most Los Angeles schools, the 10th District PTA is supposed to be that bridge. In addition to running the dental and vision clinics and sponsoring training sessions, officers from the 10th District--one of the two regional offices that serve LAUSD schools--often testify at school board meetings. The 10th District serves campuses south of the Santa Monica Mountains while the 31st District represents those in the San Fernando Valley. But the districts’ influence is limited because many of their board members simultaneously serve as PTA officers at their children’s schools and are swamped in activities there.

The districts are also responsible for helping parents organize new chapters, but 10th District leaders say they wait for schools to invite them in. Yet, some parents and principals report that they have made repeated phone calls before district representatives would visit their schools to help draft the bylaws and elect officers to start new chapters.

In early June, Veronica Salazar stood behind the lectern in Belvedere’s auditorium to open her first PTA meeting. About 40 moms and dads showed up--a respectable turnout for most schools, particularly on an evening when they could have stayed home for either the NBA championship or a World Cup soccer match.

“Muchas gracias,” Salazar began as she took the microphone nervously. “Thank you very much for coming and supporting your children.” Speaking in Spanish, Salazar crisply outlined the PTA’s plans for the 2002-2003 school year. Parents took away handouts that spoke to both their ambitions for their children and to the economic realities that many families face in this school. One pamphlet graphically depicted the tooth decay that results when toddlers fall asleep sucking a bottle and another listed free and low-cost health clinics nearby. A third explained the course requirements for admission to the University of California and exhorted parents to start preparing their young children now.

Her immediate concern, however, was the $225,000 budget cut this East Los Angeles school has to absorb this year. The shortfall means “there will be no money for field trips,” warned Vice Principal and PTA Treasurer Robert Martinez as he took the microphone. “None,” and the number of teachers’ aides in this year-round school will drop dramatically. You parents can help fill this gap, he said, leaning over the lectern. Get involved. Volunteer in your child’s classroom. Join the PTA. “We need you to help us.”

“We’re starting a penny drive,” Salazar said, to collect money for field trips. Each classroom will have a jar, she said. “We hope you’ll contribute,” she urged, mindful of the Sisyphean task of restoring thousands of dollars in field-trip money one penny at a time.

If pennies for field trips or new paint on aging bungalows were all it took to boost Los Angeles schools, then Sylvia Shelp, Cindy Yang, Rosaura Tirado and Veronica Salazar could justly claim that their labors--the endless meetings and telephoning, the classroom volunteers, spaghetti dinners and the book fairs--will lift student test scores and graduation rates. But these women are the first to admit that sparking and sustaining improved student performance is a more complicated enterprise, one beyond even their prodigious energy and capabilities. Indeed, at Beethoven, 3rd Street and Belvedere schools, Stanford 9 test scores rose last year but at Glassell Park they fell slightly.

“My son asked me, ‘Mom, why are you involved in the PTA?’ ” Shelp recalls one morning. “I told him, ‘You do it to make a difference.’ My mother was involved in the PTA--when parents get involved, their kids get better grades.”

But do they? When parents show up on Saturday to plant flowers around school, is their child inspired to work harder in class? Or are the kids who do well in school simply more likely to have parents who are involved in all aspects of their education? In the face of LAUSD’s crushing deficits and widespread overcrowding, is any parent group--particularly one stubbornly committed to looking beyond individual schools--relevant? With the new school year underway, the PTA is facing one of its severest tests.