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Community group criticizes city schools
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Members of a community organization concerned about the Youngstown city schools say they can get parents into school buildings, but the district lacks the mechanism to get those parents involved.
Wanda Coleman, co-president of the Parent Student Union; and Carole McWilson and Joyce Lomax, co-founder and co-president, respectively, of the FAMILY Empowerment Student Achievement Institute, conducted a news conference Monday in response to comments last month by Mayor John A. McNally.
McNally said without the involvement of more parents, no amount of meaningful success will occur in the city school system. McNally’s comments came after the NAACP’s president said in a news conference that Superintendent Connie Hathorn and his deputy superintendent should be replaced because of the lack of progress on the state report card.
“I’m a parent, and I’m involved,” said Coleman, custodial grandparent of three children in the city schools. “Please stop looping all parents in the same group. Say ‘some parents.’”
She said she’s attended school board and academic commission meetings but has never gotten a response.
“I’ve talked to Superintendent Hathorn,” Coleman said. “I’ve gotten a smile. I’ve gotten a hug, but no response.”
Parents went to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for help, she said, and the NAACP got no response from the school board last month when its president said the organization wants to help in improving the schools.
Hathorn declined to comment except to say: “If the NAACP wants to work with me, they can meet with me anytime.”
Coleman acknowledged that she, too, would like to see more parents involved in their children’s schooling. She said she wants McNally to meet with parents and offer his support to them, just as he has to Hathorn.
McNally said he’s willing to do that.
“I congratulate them on being involved,” he said.
The mayor said he believes they want the same thing and that he wasn’t attacking parents.
“I just wanted to encourage parents and families to get involved in the education of their children on a daily basis because it makes a difference,” McNally said.
Education doesn’t end when the school day does, he said.
McWilson said the organization has organized events in years past celebrating students who achieved academic success, and those events drew more than 3,000 parents and families. Some of the schools developed their own versions of the events recognizing student achievement or other accomplishments.
The organization has demonstrated that parents are involved and committed to their children’s education, but it’s up to the school district to develop relationships with those parents, she said.
“We can’t do it for them,” McWilson said.
Phillip Wherry, chief operating officer of the Parent Institute, a Fairfax Station, Va., private, independent corporation that encourages parental involvement in education, said parental involvement is crucial to a child’s education.
Of a child’s waking hours, less than 15 percent is spent in school and school-related activities.
“What happens in the other 85 percent of the time really matters in terms of academic performance,” he said.
Even if a parent finds a school system unwelcoming, much of the parental involvement that makes a difference for students academically goes on at home, Wherry said.
“Reading with your children, even showing them reading or modeling reading, asking them open-ended questions about school,” he said. “It’s the simple stuff that really matters.”