Leadership magazine Sept/Oct 2015 V45 No 1 | Page 19
ating a platform for authentic parent voice/
meaningful partnership; organizing the
community; and shifting the conversation
from school-centric to community-centric
through a school-community approach.
Seeing the need
School administrators Joseph Domingues
and Peter Flores, co-authors of this article,
acknowledged a movement that grew to include many parents and community members who organized to confront what they
deemed as resistance from the school. The
parents and community members wanted to
address the social justice and educational equity issues related to lack of access for Latino
students and parents.
Organizers yearned for more meaningful
parent participation relative to educational
disparities among district schools related
to demographics and economics. Specifically, their concerns included lack of enrollment of many Latino students in year-round
math and English, lack of enrollment in a-g
college-ready academic courses, and lack of
academic opportunities for active English
language learners and redesignated students, who comprised 80 percent of the student population.
Parents and community members brought
public awareness that students were not receiving adequate services as evidenced by
low redesignation of English learning students, and low graduation and college-going
rates. These factors, combined with a highly
school-centric climate, gave parents a sense
of urgency about having more meaningful
voice in their children’s education.
Unfortunately, most of the changes parents wanted to discuss are typically considered to be “legal” issues determined through
collective bargaining processes. The more
the parents and community members expressed their concerns and pushed for
changes, the more resistance they experienced, leaving them feeling isolated and ignored by the school and vital stakeholders.
Creating a platform for voice
This small group of organizing concerned
parents and community members began
as the core leadership group known as Que
Padre! (What a parent!), and also Totally
Awesome! – names that had arisen out of
the school’s Cafecito meetings. The school’s
newest administrators created Cafecito,
(or Coffee with the Principal) meetings as
a venue for encouraging parent voice and
school involvement. Cafecito meetings, held
quarterly, had swelled to include over 700
English- and Spanish-speaking parents.
Parents and community members also began
to attend school board meetings to express
their concerns and
demands for change,
which were met with
resistance.
The parents and
community members
of Santa Maria High
School, not unlike
their counter pa r ts
across the district, felt
compelled to act and
were well schooled
on how to organize
and press for change.
And, organize they
did! They read and
digested former California Superintendent of Education
Jack O’Connell’s “A
Framework for Closing California’s Academic Achievement
Gap,” taking particular note of this passage:
“Access to high-quality educational experiences is the right of every student and the
responsibility of the state. Today, the State
of California has not lived up to this commitment for all students, particularly poor,
racial/ethnic minority students; English
learners and students with disabilities. This
need not be” (California P-16 Council,
2008).
Organizing the community
The group realized it needed to move
forward with or without the support of the
school and district stakeholders. The first
step they took was to formally organize into a
coherent parent and community union group
with a single purpose: Wanting what is best
for students. The parents named themselves
PCIC, Parents Community Involvement
Committee. PCIC published a “platform”
on which they detailed the goals and change
initiatives they wanted administrators and
teachers to work with them to achieve so that
all students could be successful.
The formal PCIC Platform was published in the local news media. They also
referenced their awareness of the California
parent trigger law, which puts significant
power in the hands of parents. This action
certainly got the attention of the educators
and school staff. Upon the invitation of the
PCIC leadership, members grew to include
site administrators, teachers, and staff members from the feeder elementary district, the
high school district, and the leadership from
the teachers union.
Conversations about meeting the needs
of the students took place outside PCIC
meetings as well. Discussions began to shift
from talking about what was wrong with
the sc