Group Works to Include Migrant Parents: Cultural Barriers Can Affect Level of Involvement

By Mary Lane Gallagher, The Bellingham Herald, Wash.

Feb. 16–Everson Elementary School Principal Kevin De Vere sees many Spanish-speaking families at after-school parents’ events. He hopes he’ll hear more of their voices, too, after a series of leadership training sessions for Whatcom County’s migrant parent leaders.

Officers of Migrant Parent Advisory Committees in the Lynden, Nooksack Valley and Ferndale school districts are getting leadership training from the state in an effort to encourage Spanish-speaking parents to raise their voices on behalf of their children.

“I want them to feel welcome, that they have a say and that they know how to help their kids,” De Vere said.

The training, provided by the state’s regional migrant education officer, will include an overview of how the education system works, including testing, educational standards and how to read test score reports, said Estela Carrera-Infante, parent services coordinator for the Migrant Education Regional Office.

“We’re hoping the parents will be more vocal,” Carrera- Infante said, “that they’ll be more informed.”

Many Spanish-speaking parents feel uncomfortable asking too many questions about their kids’ schooling, Carrera-Infante said. Language is part of the barrier, she said. But many parents also hold back out of respect for teachers, she said.

“The teacher is the expert,” she said. “Out of respect, we don’t question.”

But Carrera-Infante hopes to encourage parents to play a more active role, partly by arming them with knowledge of how the school system works and how parents are expected to participate.

School districts must have Migrant Parent Advisory Committees as part of federally funded programs serving children whose parents often move to work seasonal jobs. Officially, these parent groups, made up of at least 51 percent migrant workers, advise school districts on how to spend their migrant education budgets.

But in communities with large, thriving Spanish-speaking populations, the committees can also be de facto Parent- Teacher Organizations,

Doug Adelstein, Lynden district director of human resources and grants

with large fundraisers and annual events that are central to schools’ social fabric.

The local committees are much smaller, for now.

Sylvia Mendoza, Nooksack Valley School District’s migrant home visitor, has organized and led the district’s migrant parent meetings, drawing 20 to 30 parents.

“We discuss everything from school-related issues like the WASL or graduation requirements to getting health resources,” she said.

And many Spanish-speaking parents are very interested in school events, attending parent literacy nights and coffees with the principal, she said. But no parents had stepped forward to take more of a leadership role in the Migrant Parent Advisory Committee until this year, she said.

She hopes Spanish-speaking parents keep expanding their ideas about what they can do at the school. She’d like to see more of them volunteer at the school, for example, she said.

“The kids would love that,” she said.

Lynden’s Migrant Parent Advisory Committee surveyed parents earlier this school year and learned they were interested in conversational English classes. So the district is offering a fiveweek series of classes for parents, and literacy activities for their kids.

The classes will focus on words that parents might use in a school setting, said Doug Adelstein, the district’s director of human resources and grants.

“We’re trying to help them understand that they’re the bosses, and we in the schools work for them,” he said. “We’re just trying to break down the walls and say, ‘It’s your school as much as it’s my children’s school.’ “

Reach Mary Lane Gallagher at 715-2285 or mary.gallagher@bellinghamherald.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Bellingham Herald, Wash.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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