Quality Time for Parents, Principals

For most school principals, spring break means a weeklong reprieve from parental grousing. Not so for Bob Glew, a principal at a Laguna Hills middle school.

Glew and dozens of other school administrators attending a national principals convention in Anaheim are supplying advice to people throughout the country via e-mail and a toll-free hotline.

Glew, principal of San Joaquin Middle School, spent two hours of his spring vacation Monday talking to parents, most of them concerned about special education. Four of his six calls were from Southern Californians, which he said was unusual in his 10 years of manning the line.

Most were seeking second opinions or suggestions on how to approach their schools with questions. Glew alternately encouraged them to fight for their children’s rights and soothed callers’ frustrations.

When parents don’t trust administrators to give them accurate information, Glew said, an anonymous principal seems like the best source for help in navigating school bureaucracy.

“There’s a lot of fear out there about schools,” he said. “The callers don’t know me, and I don’t know them, so it’s totally nonthreatening.”

He encouraged callers such as Sunland mother Corazon Alexiou, who thinks her son has dyslexia but wasn’t sure what to do next, to “be relentless” in asking for tests and supplied the educators’ terminology to use.

Along with Glew in the Anaheim Convention Center room, eight other principals were on phone duty, and one answered e-mails.

Spanish-language translators and a school psychologist hovered nearby. The service is only available during the convention, which ends today.

By end of the day Monday, more than 300 calls and e-mails had been received from 35 states. Concerns besides special education included bullying and kindergarten readiness.

Glew said the hotline experience helps him sympathize more with the parents at his school and try to maintain open lines of communication.

“I always judge at the end of the day whether I think these things would have happened at my place,” he said.

Even when one mother talked with Glew for 30 minutes -- most of his calls lasted about 10 -- he never sounded rushed.

His sole frustration was a father reluctant to remove his daughter with attention-deficit disorder from parochial school, despite needing services only a public district could provide.

“If you’re not going to fight that fight, you’re not going to get that help,” Glew said. He sighed after hanging up the phone. “Too many people want instant fixes. They don’t want to fight.”

Glew supplied validation to beleaguered parents such as Torrance mother Donna Schott, 45. She didn’t think one of her seventh-grade son’s teachers was doing a good job, so she had the boy transferred out of the class.

“The school makes me feel like a witch for going to such lengths to help my child,” she said. “[Glew] made me feel that my actions are justified.”

Principals will be available today from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. at (800) 944-1601 or by filling out a form on the National Assn. of Elementary School Principals’ Web site at www.naesp.org.