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