YOur school sysstem should have cultural or ESL people available to your school also

I just recently moved into a community with a high percent of hispanic citizens. I'm seeing first hand the very real challenges that the language and cultural barriers place on these families. They've already taken a tremendous leap of faith to move into a community where they don't understand the language, the money, anything really - all to make a better life for their kids. In my mind, they are already heros.

I'm anxious to see how my school's parent group rises to the challenge of including these parents. School starts tomorrow so I hope to find ways to get involved and see how things work.

One idea - With a large hispanic section, your school must have staff members who speak the language. Would any of them be willing to be an offical board member, acting as Cultural Liason? Perhaps even be willing to go so far as to translate PTO info into Spanish? I know, many folks believe in the "Live in America, Learn English!" philosophy, but there are bound to be one or two transition generations that we need to reach out to first.

[ 08-09-2006, 02:13 PM: Message edited by: CrewChief ]

It sounds like there may be some parents out there who want to be involved but don't feel comfortable because of the langauge barrier. I would recommend putting together a diverse group of parents who can sit down and work out a way to make your parent group available and beneficial for everyone. You all have some very important things in common-you have children who attend this school and you want them to get a good education-work from there. Ask people what they expect and need from the parent group, what would help them get involved, and what they would like to see improved in the school.

I know several schools in my area do not require a fee for joining the PTO, but the school my kids go to does this:
$2.00 PTO fee
$10.00 PTO fee plus small gift (last year it was a keychain)
$25.00 PTO fee plus gift and name in the yearbook (gift was a school license plate)

Plus, the classes with 100% parent PTO membership participation had a party (ice cream, pizza, something like that).

We are a Title 1 school - more than half school receiving free or reduced lunches, but we still have a strong parent involvement. We don't have the cultural diversity background that you have, but maybe something like this could help. This may not help your original problem, but maybe you can give a variety of options on how to join...

Hi there,

I'm a mom of 3 (2 in elementary and 1 in preschool). Our school has had a PTA for years, but there are usually only about 2-3 parents willing to get involved. I have never wanted to, but have been on the school site council instead. Last year I discussed the possibility of going PTO instead of PTA and some people seemed to like that idea. We're also losing about 1/3 of our students to a new school opening up in a new housing development area. Our % of low income families will go up because we are losing upper income families who live in the new housing. I hate to say it's about cultural diversity, but I have been told by one of the Hispanic moms that most of the Hispanic families do not want to be involved because they are intimidated. Their English is not very good and I think asking for that $7 fee to join was the clincher. I'm just concerned that we will have even less involvement this year, but hoping that a PTO without a fee to join will help.

Any advice as to how to break through that cultural barier? We have about 1/3 Hispanic and 1/3 Philipino. The rest is a mixture of Caucasian, African American, Asian.

We're also a very small school now. Probably around 250 students in K-5. Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Kathryn