Mohawk: Bringing Out the Kid in the Parents
One night a month at Mohawk Elementary School in Bessemer, things get a little immature. That’s because the school invites parents in for events like the Blizzard (as in ice cream) Bash, Silly Slipper Night, Crazy Hat Night or a dinner theater performance by the fifth- and sixth-graders.
The parent-involvement nights typically consist of reading, storytellers, activities and lots of food. But part of the two-hour program is always spent educating the parents on the curriculum, state standards and what they can do to help. The “edu-tainment” package has been so successful that Mohawk Elementary teachers and administrators are regular presenters at conferences on parent involvement. “Why do we do it?” asks Mohawk Elementary assistant principal Patricia Monaco. “Just to get the parents involved in the education of their kids.”
It worked on Kelly Gubish, whose sons Cory and Matthew are entering sixth and second grades, respectively. She went from a garden-variety Parent Teacher Association member to a regular volunteer. “I feel welcomed,” Gubish says. “They invite you into the school to read to the kids.”
Moms and dads also stream in for the annual Jump-a-Thon, in which parents, teachers, administrators and students jump rope in a benefit for the American Heart Association. Some help out at recess. And last year, when the district was deciding whether to offer full-day kindergarten, parents not only successfully lobbied to get that added, but also helped determine how the program is going to be run, says Monaco.
Such decision-making power gives parents a say in the long-term future of the district, but Gubish is really in it for the instant payoff. “The thing I see with Matt is the pride, that ‘My mom is here helping,’” she says. “It means a lot to the kids, and I think it brings us closer. I think a lot of parents don’t realize how much it means to your child to have you there.”

Quaker Valley: Tech and Touch
In 2001, Quaker Valley School District became one of three “digital school districts” in Pennsylvania and distributed laptops to every student from third grade to 12th (it’s now only ninth-graders to 12th-graders). A follow-up study by the think-tank RAND Corp. found that the experiment had mixed results, but one positive was “increased capacity for [teacher] communication with students, parents, peers and principals.” The district has built on that using an online portal that gives parents access to consistently updated information on their child’s grades, attendance, assignments and activities.
“ What we try to do in all of our technology thinking is not only look at the high tech, but also the high touch,” says Superintendent R. Gerard Longo. Nowhere is that more evident than at the middle school—an educational level at which parent involvement flags in many districts.
“ There’s a direct correlation between the amount of time the parent spends in the building and the student’s progress in education,” says Quaker Valley Middle School principal Kenneth Powell. To that end, he brings parents into the Sewickley building even before the school year begins for Meet the Team Night, at which they hear from and hobnob with teachers and administrators. Parents are solicited to serve in the library, lunchroom, school store and classrooms. They’re enticed into helping out with book fairs, career days, pot-luck dinners, staff-appreciation lunches, meetings and fundraisers. And since Sept. 11, 2001, they’ve been enlisted to help their children better the world.
After the terrorist attacks, middle-school students led by history teacher John Doucette resolved to get engaged. They held a series of fundraisers for the Todd M. Beamer Foundation (now known as Heroic Choices), named after one of the passengers involved in fighting back against the hijackers on Flight 93, which crashed on 9/11 in Somerset County, and dedicated to helping kids deal with trauma. Out of that experience was born Kids for Kids, an annual effort that has raised more than $13,000 for AIDS orphans in Kenya and people with housing needs in the Pittsburgh area.
In Kids for Kids, the students do the grunt work involved in holding a carnival, silent auctions and a dinner-and-a-movie night at which the middle-schoolers cook and baby-sit while their parents eat and enjoy a flick. “The parents helped somewhat with the implementation,” says Katherine Backus, a freelance editor and literary agent from Sewickley whose daughter, Lara, is moving on to high school this year. Backus, for instance, arranged to get a climbing wall and other attractions to the carnival.
Backus, along with parents Susan Kaminski and Cathy Susko, also got involved last year when the district invited parents to help with its curriculum-review process. Responding to concerns by parents and staff that the middle school’s language-arts program needed to be extended and enriched, the three parents got in touch with a number of schools that beat QV Middle on the state’s standardized English test. As a result of their research and the joint efforts of the teachers and administration, the district plans to increase its instruction in reading, literature and grammar from 55 minutes to 90 minutes a day.
“ It’s one thing looking at the homework,” says Backus. “It’s another thing to get in the trenches and review the book list or help in the library.” The school and the children benefit, she says, but the experience also enriches the parent. “When you’re dealing with children and teachers—people who are, for the most part, involved in the betterment of life—it really does change your perspective.”

Blackhawk: Juniors and Seniors
Why stop with parents? Every year Blackhawk School District’s two primary schools, Patterson Primary and Northwestern Primary, hold a series of Grand Days to get the district’s grandparents involved with education.
Grand Day draws seniors from as far off as Florida and Minnesota, says Kathy Dabrowski, principal of Patterson Primary in Beaver Falls. In fact, she says, it “almost got out of hand” at one point, because more than two grandparents typically show up for each of Patterson’s 220 students. To accommodate the crowds, she had to break the event into multiple days.
The afternoon programs start with short plays, poems or recitations by the students. Then the grandparents go to their grandkids’ classrooms and see the work they’ve done and sometimes get involved in or witness problem-solving exercises. “The day ends with a little bit of a social, with punch and a cookie, and maybe a craft they do together,” says Dabrowski. The kids can then go home with their grandparents.
“ It gives us a chance to look for grandparents that may be local who can become part of our parent/grandparent volunteer program,” says Dabrowski. They read to children and provide one-on-one tutoring. Grandparents “are the ones who have the time, because parents are busy working,” she says.
Dorothy Tihanovich’s involvement at Patterson started when she attended a Grand Day for her grandson, who is now going into seventh grade. Now her granddaughter is going into third grade, and Tihanovich is a regular. “I’ve been tutoring three days a week for two years,” she says. A former private preschool director and teacher, she has tutored in just about every subject. “I think there are some kids who did very well with it,” she says. “Spelling was iffy. Some improved, some didn’t.”
Of course, Tihanovich’s own grandkids occasionally get special tutoring attention, she says, from her home in Beaver Falls. “Many times my granddaughter would come back with homework, and we could do it here,” she says. That saved the parents precious time, she says. “Grandparents can pick up a lot of the slack in that area.”

South Park: Testing the Digital Waters
Any time you apply new technology to something as sensitive as a child’s education, you have to proceed with caution, says Steve Boisvert, technology coordinator for the South Park School District. “We don’t [want to] violate a person’s privacy or inadvertently send something to the wrong person,” Boisvert says. That’s why South Park is looking carefully at security issues before it posts grades or starts e-mailing information on specific students to their parents. The district has started its Internet push by posting general information, and last year some middle-school teachers posted study guides, handouts and assignments.
By the end of this school year, South Park hopes to have its entire curriculum online, says Boisvert. That’s the first step toward posting complete educational materials. In the not-too-distant future, he says, a common student crisis will be resolvable with a click of the mouse. “I lost my books the night before it’s due. What do I do?” he asks. “You go to the Internet.”
South Park is one of three schools involved in an Allegheny Intermediate Unit pilot project for upgrading district Web sites. A primary goal is to get information to parents faster, says Joe Finucan, senior Web developer at the intermediate unit. With the unit’s help, pilot schools like South Park are able to post school-delay information, homework assignments, solutions to math problems and links to research resources. Finucan says that’s just the beginning.
Finucan sees a future in which parent-teacher conferences are held in chat rooms or by videophone; teacher Weblogs give parents day-by-day descriptions of what’s going on in the classroom; entire families join virtual field trips from terminals at home, work and school; and personalized online calendars automatically fill in events that a family’s children need to attend. “One of the things for sure I see is e-commerce,” he says. “You’re going to see parents pay for lunches online, or field trips or yearbooks.” — R.L.

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