In Depth: Education/Training
	From the February 19, 1999 print edition

Teachers beg for help reaching parents

Lucy Chabot Staff Writer

Brenda Arambula teaches third and fourth graders at Flamingo Elementary School in Davie. Every year, she hosts an open house for the parents of her new students. And every year, she tells those parents the same thing.

"If you put aside $10 a week, you can pay for your child's college education," she tells them. "But unless you invest 10 minutes a day in their academic career, your child is not going to be ready for college."

It's a plea she can't seem to get across, that parents are children's best teachers, and that without them involved in education, children won't do as well as they can.

And it was a sentiment supported by several members of the South Florida Business Journal's first education forum early this month.

Twelve business owners, community leaders and educators agreed that getting parents more involved in primary and secondary education was the first, best step in improving the quality of a child's education.

But that's not always easy. Parents are busy working and are often too stressed and tired at the end of a day to study math problems with their children, make it to soccer games after work, or take their children to special events at school, said Trina Pulliam, president of Trainnovations, a Jupiter-based training company.

The trick, Pulliam said, is to learn "how to."

"If we could just get the business community to help us train the middle segment of parents -- where both are working -- and train them how to balance everything they have to do, and how to juggle, we could make a difference [in education]," she said. "It's all about `how to'."

While myriad programs exist for low-income and troubled children, the children of single-parent homes and two-income homes often slip through the cracks with passing C and D grades.

But that's where business owners and managers can step in, Arambula said. They can support nighttime activities at school, such as reading nights, math nights, even parenting skills nights by offering door prizes or furnishing pizza or other dinner foods. Arambula has tried hosting such evenings, but laments that too few parents show up.

"If we could entertain them with prizes or a drawing, offer food ... just get them there, we could help," she said.

Another way businesses can encourage their employees who are parents to be more involved is to permit them time off for such things as teacher-parent conferences, school plays and mentoring programs.

Bruce Thomson, partnerships coordinator with the School District of Palm Beach County's department of community and business alliances, is surveying Palm Beach County businesses to see which have parent-friendly policies such as granting time-off for conferences and allowing telecommuting, flex time and the like.

If businesses don't step up to offer these benefits, more and more people -- single moms especially -- likely will work for companies that do, or will take advantage of the Internet and start their own at-home businesses, said Rob Fellman of PC Professor.

One way business have been successful in increasing parental involvement is in the Schools in the Work-place program in Miami-Dade County. In that program, satellite learning centers are established on the grounds of a business and employees can drop their children off in the morning, pick them up after work.

The centers, on location at such places as Miami International Airport, American Bankers Insurance Group and Mount Sinai Medical Center, have lowered student absences and turnover, and businesses have seen lower employee absenteeism, said Jeff Ronci, a Dade County Public Schools spokesman.

All it takes from the business is to furnish space -- either by renovating an existing building or build a new one. The school district does the rest, Ronci said.

The centers not only attract employees in a tight labor market, but enable businesses to work more closely with schools, examine curriculum and address one of their biggest complaints -- that applicants and employees have trouble filling out forms such as applications and performing simple math, such as counting back change from a cash register.

"Often, we think the teacher before us covered this skill," Arambula said. "They give us three days to teach 10-year-olds how to count back change. There's is just no way. It's a very difficult skill. It takes three weeks. But then, we're way behind."

"The scope and sequence is way off," said Mary Burgs, a teacher at Flamingo Elementary who with Arambula sponsors the Junior Chamber of Commerce at the school. "We go a mile wide and inch deep. We need to go narrower and deeper."

To do that would mean eliminating such buzz topics as multi-cultural education, sex education, values and morals and get back to the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, Burgs said. But since those also-valuable lessons likely won't be tossed aside any time soon, the solution may be more of a commitment to children.

"We need a massive amount of money, and personnel, and a determined effort to get to these kids," said Dr. Ernest Booth, assistant principal at Attucks Middle School in Fort Lauderdale. "There's a sizable portion of students who have missed the boat by the time they reach middle school. They are unmotivated, not learning and they are interfering with the education of the masses.

"It's a joke. It really is a joke. And it isn't working."