D.C. Council members on Friday unveiled a new program they hope will spur thousands of parents to become more involved in the public school system as it undergoes dramatic reform. Council member Kwame Brown, who created the pledge system, said the idea is to get parents to commit in writing to volunteer 10 hours of their time to one of the school facilities and recruit five other adults to sign a similar pledge.
Individual schools will then compete to see which can make the greatest strides in increasing Adequate Yearly Progress scores. The top three will win tickets for the whole school to Six Flags for a Family Fun Day.
Council Chair Vincent Gray, in his remarks, emphasized that parental participation and student enrollment have both plummeted in recent years.
“We’ve gone from 144,000 students to 55,000 students, and I, for one, am not interested in solving the problem through attrition,” he said. “We need to reverse this, so the number of parents involved increases.”
The announcement came three days before the D.C. public school system opens its doors for what should be a historic school year, marked by the mayor’s takeover of the system.
D.C. Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser told the crowd that the impending transformation creates a “new sense of urgency.”
“The government cannot do this alone,” she said.
Jenise “Jo” Patterson, of the advocacy group Parent Watch Inc., said creating incentives for parental involvement is a step in the right direction. Yet school system leaders now must do a better job of addressing the social problems that are related to students’ and family’s struggles to excel.
“It starts at signing a pledge, but there’s a system-wide change that has to happen,” she said.
