EXCLUSIVE: City schools will push for more 'family connections,' parent involvement, Chancellor Carmen Fariña says
Family engagement at schools will be getting an overhaul, the city schools boss tells the Daily News. Changes include longer one-on-one parent-teacher conferences, workshops for parents and support for GED and English as a Second Language classes for moms and dads.
Power to the parents!
Moms and dads will find a new welcome mat awaiting them when they drop off their kids for the first day of class on Thursday, city schools boss Carmen Fariña told the Daily News.
Parent-teacher conferences are just one aspect of family engagement that is about to get a giant overhaul, said Fariña, who has made increasing parent involvement in public schools one of her top priorities.
“We’re going to have a very big push on more family connections,” the veteran educator told the Daily News in an exclusive interview last week. “Workshops for parents: How do parents help in school? How do they continue the work in school at home?”
The week of Sept. 16 will be devoted to that goal — when all public schools will hold open-house parents’ nights.
In November there will be one-on-one parent-teacher conferences — with the student present.
Fariña said the by-appointment, 15-minute meetings on academic progress would be more effective than in previous years, when parents would stand in line for fleeting face time with their kids’ teacher.
It’s all part of a new model — codified in the new teachers contract — that allows teachers to devote at least 40 minutes of every school week to meetings with parents.
“I personally don’t think a PTA meeting is a good measure of whether parents are engaged in schools,” said Fariña, explaining the need for a new approach.
“Many PTA meetings, in my opinion, are boring, and they don’t serve the purposes of parents.”
Fariña will also retrain around 1,800 parent coordinators assigned to city schools, who are charged with getting parents involved in their kids’ education.
She also promised to give support for GED and English as a Second Language classes for parents to be taught in any public school where more than 20 parents request them. That initiative squares with Mayor de Blasio’s beliefs.
“The more parents are involved in their own education the more likely they are to serve as good models for their kids,” she saidEXCLUSIVE: City schools will push for more 'family connections,' parent involvement, Chancellor Carmen Fariña says - NY Daily News: