Community schools recognize the vital role of full-service partnerships is a recent post from Thoughts On Public Education, and give a pretty good report on recent developments in developing community schools.
I’ve previously posted that I wish more community schools included parents in their idea of “partnerships” (see Parent Leadership Is Often “Missing Link” In Community Schools).
Nevertheless, they’re definitely steps in the right direction…
Parents worked with teachers and others to stop an insane new testing regimen in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Read about it in The Washington Post at A rare break from testing madness.
I think it’s great that the California PTA wants to be a political leader in getting more funds for schools. In California, they’re a major backer of a tax initiative that’s hoping to be on November ballot.
Unfortunately, they are competing with two other efforts — one led by Governor Jerry Brown (with support from The California Teachers Association) and the other by the California Federation of Teachers — that want to also place tax measures for schools on the same ballot. And the one supported by the PTA is polling substantially worse than the other two.
There’s a community organizer axiom that says you never try a ballot measure unless you’re pretty darn sure you’re going to win. That’s because if you try and lose, you end up considerably weaker politically.
I am not aware of The PTA being this explicitly political in the past, and I think moving in that direction is excellent. However, since it is relatively new to the organization, if I were them I’d want to make sure that members had a very positive experience — defeat is not the most energizing experience for people new to the political process, and is not the result that is going to generate long-term enthusiasm for parent engagement in schools.
Plus, if all three get on the ballot, that dramatically increases the odds of them all failing and schools getting nothing.
I hope that the PTA decides, instead, to make a deal with Governor Brown and the CTA — the PTA drops support for their own initiative in return for something (perhaps earmarking some funds for increased parent engagement support). That would be “half a loaf” and not “half a baby” — and then everyone wins, including our students.