Our Title I is required to have a Parent Advisory Council. I've on it for three years. We meet and go over the previous years "contracts" that the parents, students, and teachers sign which states that each of these people will strive to do different things. For example teachers promise to make themselves available to parents, parents promise to be as involved as they can with their child's education and the students promise to act appropriately etc. I know that is vague but the contracts are each about a page long.

We also have a parent liason who is supposed to promote volunteering and programs as such, but her hours were cut to 20 hours per week and she usually assist our EIS who is also our Title I cooridinator. So the PTOs are pretty much responsible for bringing in the volunteers. Our principal LOVES volunteers. I came up with a program and the parent liason at that time helped me with it. She was a big help.

As far as the NCLB act I am not sure about. I know that during one of my training sessions as sub aide we were told because of that we had to have an equivalent of an associates degree or get a Paraeducator Assment Certificate. I have a Teachers Aide Diploma and was told they could look at that as experience but nothing else. I attend college and obtained my certificate and I work less now than I did before. The people that get called the most have little experience and have only a high school diploma. I don't think our district pays much attention to the NCLB.(I know that really wasn't your point but it felt good to vent)

I am hoping that some of you may help me out. I suddenly found myself with our school district's parent involvement policy. I must say that I was pretty disgusted to see it hasn't been updated since 1996!! Yeah 1996!! Im not pretending to understand it all but found areas that appear to have been title one requirements at the time. We have a school/parent compact and there are numerous things that just no longer seem to be occuring. As far as parents rights with NCLB does anyone have a clue...i did go to the site and got some info off of it. Still a little(Ok lot) confused. On our compact it is listed that parents be allowed to volunteer /observe their child's classes. Is this infact part of the nclb requirement, i can think of at least to incidents where parents have been turned away more than once from entering the classroom. You may think well it disturbs classes..yes but if a parent wants to volunteer to read a book to a first grade class every other month and isn't allowed in that seems wrong. any insight please let me know. I am in New York if that means anything=)