This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
Wissahickon Charter School in Germantown employs a parent outreach coordinator and formally acknowledges all kinds of parental activities – from reading aloud at home to raising money to chaperoning trips.
The Folk Arts – Cultural Treasures Charter School (FACTS) in Chinatown, which seeks out families from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, has language interpreters on staff and offers parents simultaneous translations of meetings.
At Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in West Philadelphia, the president of the Parent Teacher Association sits in on weekly administrative team meetings.
At Independence Charter School in Center City, 10 of the 13 members of the governing body are parents of children in the school.
“Our school was founded by parents,” said Jurate Krokys, the CEO of Independence, a K-8 school in the city’s historic district. “Part of the mission of the school is parent involvement.”
Charter schools have the opportunity and the incentive to rewrite the playbook on parent engagement. Opportunity – because the charter movement is based on the premise that parents should have choice of schools and more control over their children’s education. And incentive – because charters depend on widening their circle of committed families to stay in operation.
“Charter schools rely on parents, and they realize that the success of their schools comes from involving the parents as well,” said Deborah Toney-Moore, a parent with students at both Harambee and Imhotep, a charter high school in West Oak Lane.
Charters give parents the chance to be part of the school’s governance because their trustees function as a board of education. Many schools set up their charters so that parents must be represented – or even have a majority – on the board.
But the chance to help shape a school from scratch goes much deeper than that, and can be both exciting and scary. “The majority of our families want to be involved but some aren’t sure yet how they fit in,” said Angela Walden, the parent outreach coordinator at Wissahickon. “It can be intimidating.”
Another interesting aspect of charter schools is that the people working in them, including the principal and teachers, often enroll their own children – a relative rarity in urban public schools that serve disadvantaged students. At Wissahickon, 10 staff members, including CEO Julie Stapleton-Carroll, have children in the school.
Some research indicates that parents who go out of their way to choose a school, as do those who apply to charters, are more likely to be involved. But charter school leaders report facing some of the same difficulties in getting working class and low-income parents to be as active as more affluent ones. To do that, some of these schools go out of their way to recognize different means of involvement.
“All parents want great things for kids, but some define their help as making sure their children get to school and keeping their clothes clean…and feel that education is very much the teacher’s job,” said Krokys, who describes herself as the daughter of immigrants who felt that way. “Their attitude is, ‘Who am I, with just a GED, to interfere?’”
In contrast, many parents who are professionals see involvement as not just helping students prepare for school but attending every meeting and taking part in school decision-making. Kelley Collings, a parent at Wissahickon who teaches at Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, a regular District school, said that this is an ongoing issue.
“I feel like class politics plays out intensely in charters,” she said. “Middle class parents are in governance roles. The larger population is low-income parents. There’s a great divide. It becomes a challenge how the school defines itself.”
Just as with any public school, how parent-friendly a charter school is depends ultimately on the individual school’s leadership and direction.
There is a question of how much charter schools can demand of parents as a condition of keeping their children enrolled. Some require parents to sign contracts that promise a certain level of involvement with the school, but it’s unclear whether those contracts are enforceable.
By law, charter schools must admit children by lottery and can’t seek out a particular demographic or discourage special education students. But some have been accused of manipulating enrollment by seeking to exclude families that don’t demonstrate willingness to meet the school’s expectations – or whose children are likely to drag down test scores. On the other hand, a charter school does have a right to realize and promote its particular mission.