D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown is planning to introduce legislation that would force low-income parents receiving financial assistance from the city to attend their children’s parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings. Brown’s bill aims to increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, a step he and other city leaders say is necessary to reap the promised benefits of school reforms, by cutting all federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program benefits to families who miss parent-teacher conferences or more than two PTA meetings without a doctor’s note or other documented excuse.
Parents of charter school students would not only lose their TANF benefits, but also the right to send their children to charter schools.
