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Thick, white binders litter the carpet of Sylvia Simms otherwise tidy living room in North Philadelphia.
“This is our secret weapon right here,” says Simms, 49, hoisting one of the phonebook-sized binders onto her lap and opening it. “This is what gives us teeth.”
Photocopied, highlighted and scribbled in pen are pages of the Title 1 section of the No Child Left Behind Act, which outlines the legal rights of parents who wish to be involved in their school. The law mandates, among other things, that schools must provide reasonable support to parent involvement. But Simms says there too much of Title 1 is worded as being optional for schools. It states that schools may pay for local parental activities, train parents to enhance the involvement of other parents and establish district-wide parent advisory councils.
“All of those ‘mays’ need to be changed into ‘shalls’,” Simms says.
Few parents know of the rights they are guaranteed in Title 1, Simms says, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education and Philadelphia School District Web sites have useful information regarding Title 1. but it is either hidden or missing completely.
Simms sits in on the Philadelphia School District’s Title 1 Parental Advisory Council, also known as Parents R Equal Partners, which aims to educate other parents on their rights and hold schools accountable. Six months ago, she formed Parent Power with other members of the council to operate independently of the Philadelphia School District and convene with like-minded parent organizations.
“If you don’t know how to navigate the school system, you’re going to be an angry parent,” Simms says.
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The group began as little more than a Facebook group and a few parents wearing “Parent Power” on their shirts at school district meetings. Simms currently has 900 people following the Facebook group. Among them is the mayor’s chief of staff, Tumar Alexander, who arranged a visit from Mayor Nutter two weeks ago during a Parent Power meeting at Simms’ home.
“Most kids now are being educated on the streets, computer, at home, and there is no behavioral reinforcement,” says Kwaco Atiba, 59, of Washington D.C.
Atiba works with Parents Anonymous and is a project assistant for the Americorps. He began networking with Simms and the Parent Power group on Facebook, as he believes the gap in the quality of education children receive is a nationwide problem. “Most of the teachers are unqualified to teach are are still students themselves. The senior teachers have been laid off.”
Younger teachers who have been recently hired or transfered from outside of the school district are often ill-equipped to handle children with special needs, says Cecilia Thompson, who is the chair of the Philadelphia Right to Education Local Task Force and a member of Parent Power. Thompson’s son has autistim spectrum disorder.
“I’d still be an accountant if I didn’t have a child with disability,” Thompson says. Instead, she devotes herself full time to Philadelphia Right to Education Local Task Force, and seeks to provide an equal education through advocating policy changes for the 33,000 children in the city who have been diagnosed with learning disorders.
“If enough parents come to us with problems and we see a pattern, we analyze it, see a panel, and make suggestions,” Thompson says. ” There’s a number of ways teachers and nurses can receiving training for special needs…but new teachers and transfers from other school districts may not know how to work the system to find out.”
The Urban STEM Strategy Group is comprised of 10 representatives from organizations who advocate science, technology, engineering and math education, and is another partner of Parent Power.
“They’re all parents with like-minded organizations in the community who want to advance the issue,” says Michelle Kuilan-Martin, a member of the Urban STEM Strategy Group.
Kulian-Martin and her husband, Anthony, also run the Philadelphia-based Urban Youth Racing School. For over a decade the school has offered a free ten-week course to 200 kids with the goal of introducing young people to a possible career in motor sports.
Kuilan-Martin says parents gain the most from all of these different organizations supporting one another, as the collective network offers resources covering the spectrum needs and concerns.
“At the rate we’re going right now, somebody needs to step up, because our kids are failing,” says Cecil Parsley, a member of Parent Power who lives in Torresdale. “To be a parent and not be involved is unacceptable.”
Parsley, a parent of three, stays busy coaching children’s football at the Moss Athletic Association recreation center and runs a T-shirt printing business in Torresdale. He is also a regional manager for Parents R Equal Partners, a role that has given him regular access to both Philadelphia School District superintendent Arlene Ackerman and the underachieving schools that groups like Parent Power hope to improve.
“I’ll go to schools and it’s a hundred questions as to why I’m here, what I’m doing, when I would be just sitting a half hour prior, talking to their boss [Arlene Ackerman],” Parsley says.
Now that the Bush administration is no longer in office, Simms fears the portions of the No Child Left Behind act that benefit parents like Title 1 may be modified or lost completely.
“These are probably going out the window soon,” she says, pointing the gargantuan white binders stuffed with notes and paper on her living room floor. She already has a much smaller binder document parent involvement in schools for the Obama years. Whatever the future brings for parent involvement in schools, parents like Simms will be ready.
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