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Parent involvement gets poor grade from PTAs
Too-busy adults, apathy blamed for drop in interest in school volunteerism,
By Kim L. Hooper
Indianapolis Star,
March 24, 2001
Indianapolis Public School 49 has 780 students, but only eight people in the PTA.
The group's president is a grandmother whose children graduated from the Westside elementary school decades ago. But 70-year-old Mici Bonta still keeps busy at the school. She started her volunteer service Friday at 6 a.m., popping, boxing and peddling popcorn for 25 cents a box -- logging six hours.
Volunteers such as Bonta are harder to come by these days.
The Chicago-based National Congress of Parents and Teachers, the nation's largest and oldest parent-volunteer group, is struggling with a lack of interest and lack of time. The 104-year-old organization has seen its membership slide nationally from a peak of more than 12 million in 1962 to 6.5 million in 1999.
PTA numbers in Indiana have gone up and down.
In 1995, there were 56,626 PTA members in the state. That number dropped below 52,000 by 1997, but membership has risen since then. In 1999, membership was listed at 56,377.
Demographics are partly to blame. The old-fashioned PTA mom who baked cookies for class 40 years ago has been replaced by harried executives juggling their schedules on Palm Pilots and cell phones.
"There are 14 million single moms in the United States," said National PTA President Ginny Markell, a high school teacher in Oregon.
Last year, a national survey found that only one in four parents of 1,000 surveyed were active in a parent-teacher group.
The national PTA's biggest challenge is making its group relevant to parents.
For example, more PTA meetings are now held at night, rather than during the school day, to accommodate working families. Parent groups are encouraged to recruit translators to assist non-English speaking parents. Local organizers in New Jersey got a huge turnout for an evening meeting by providing baby sitters, making it easier for single parents to participate.
"Our role is to provide ways for parents to help kids be more successful. The more involved the parent, the more successful the child will be," Markell said.
In IPS, where more than 41,000 children attend school, 18 of the 78 schools have no active parent group.
In suburban districts, participation is mixed -- with some groups having too many volunteers and others not enough.
Weston Elementary School in Hancock County has fewer than 10 Parent-Teacher Organization volunteers who help organize events, which is frustrating for President Rhonda Horton.
"I'm not passing judgment. But this is not just for us, it's for our children," Horton said.
While parents juggle to keep up with their children at home, most advocacy groups stress the importance of staying on top of events in a child's life at school as well.
"Meaningful parental involvement does in fact have an effect on a child's success in school," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C. "Parents who are connected to schools and meaningful parent groups do help their kids achieve."
But it's tougher these day to get parents involved because more are working -- and working longer hours. Families are struggling these days just to meet the family's basic needs -- much less using precious hours to volunteer outside the home.
The busiest volunteers would like to see more participation.
At IPS School 20, PTA president Cindy Short complains of parent apathy.
"Oh, my, I've struggled. Basically, they don't care. They just don't want to get involved. Either they don't have the time or they don't want to take the time. It makes me angry that parents don't want to get involved with their kids," she said.
PTAs aren't the only groups begging for volunteers.
Anderson Community Schools is the largest district in Madison County. It's an urban school system with about 10,000 students. The district has no PTA or PTO groups but has a parents council made up of a representative from each of the district's 15 elementary schools.
Two schools have yet to send anyone to a council meeting. When monthly meetings are held, they are sparsely attended, usually drawing no more than six of the 15 council members.
"Our struggle is to get people to come to meetings. In the evening, people don't want to come. They want to spend time at home with their kids," said Jeff Dyer, a parent who organized the council four years ago.
Dyer organized the council because many parents wanted autonomy and didn't want to pay national dues that don't go directly into local school programs.
Avon Community School Corp., a fast-growing district of 5,000 students in eastern Hendricks County, isn't lacking for parents eager to work. The district has a 308-member PTO group for its intermediate school, which has 867 students.
A weekday field trip for 20 students to a Danville apple orchard attracted so many volunteers that the PTO had to select parents by lottery.
Bonta, whose children and grandchildren have come and gone at IPS School 49, said she'll keep popping popcorn and logging long hours as long as she's able. But she'd like others to help out from time to time. "I'm not as young as I was when we first started doing this."
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Contact Kim L. Hooper at (317) 444-6494 or via e-mail at kim.hooper@starnews.com.