As my school’s Gifted and Talented Education coordinator, a large portion of my time is spent working with middle school parents on how to understand the Los Angeles Unified School District’sbyzantine web of programs and school options. Doing this work for over 15 years has led me to some understandings about parents in this urban, minority district, and a realization about how much work we have left to do to fully maximize their potential.
In my school’s community, GATE parents usually demonstrate a strong interest in all aspects of their child’s education. They seem to understand that their Gifted child is different, has unique needs, and the school is a good place to get help. Many times, gifted children have gifted parents, and these see the pivotal role school plays in improving their child’s future possibilities. This is not to say general ed parents don’t care about education; but for every 10 conferences requested by parents, 8 out of 10 are usually for my Gifted/Honors students.
Our school participates in the Schools for Advanced Studies (SAS) Program, where gifted and advanced students from throughout the city are allowed to attend SAS schools outside of their attendance area. When we first started the program, we admitted 25 students. The next year, as the acclaim grew, we admitted 100 more students. Last year, we admitted around 125, bringing our advanced studies total to 250 students from all over South Central Los Angeles, a low socio-economic community in Los Angeles.
The admissions process has introduced me to a whole subset of parents that impress me with their scope and diligence in securing the best educational opportunities for their children. These parents actively researched all options available to them and sometimes landed at my school, 5, 10, 15 miles from their own neighborhood in a program that does not offer transportation, only solid academics.
Some of these parents and students take the public transportation to get to our school. Some carpool with their Advanced Studies neighbors. Some bite the bullet and make that round trip journey by car twice a day, through traffic congestion and gasoline spikes. Several pay someone to pick up or drop off students every day.
Sounds an awful lot like middle class parents, doesn’t it? But I’m getting to that.
Once at our school, these parents become fixtures. They participate in the shared governance councils. They attend every single parent conference and back to school night. They schedule meetings with teachers if their child’s grades fall below an A. In the GATE program, there are mandatory and optional parent meetings, and they are sitting in the front row, at every meeting.