Hispanic parents are urged to be active in schools

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Monday, Sept. 23, 2002 | 10:33 a.m.

With Hispanic students making up 30 percent of Clark County's school enrollment, a national organization visited Las Vegas seeking to get the parents more involved in education.

The move was part of an ongoing national campaign by the California-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations nationwide.

"Since Census 2000, we've been going into communities with large Latino populations that are underserved," said Frank Molina, national coordinator of the group's program to motivate parents.

Fresh from recent visits to Omaha, Neb., Green Bay, Wis., and Reno -- cities that have also seen increases in Hispanic school enrollment from 1990 to 2000 -- Molina wants to teach a weeklong course to community members here.

Those community members would then teach parents over 16 weeks about how the school system works and what they can do to improve their children's education.

Molina spoke Friday to Hispanic leaders from the private and nonprofit sectors, including MGM MIRAGE and the East Las Vegas Community Development Corp., hoping to get support for returning within two to three months for the weeklong training.

MALDEF doesn't charge for training others to teach the 16-week course to parents, and will be seeking nonprofit or private sector support for Molina's travel and lodging expenses only. The School District provides no funds for the program.

The group ran a pilot course last spring at Roy Martin Middle School in Las Vegas that enrolled 12 parents and graduated five.

Aldo Aguirre, a consultant with the state Education Department, volunteered to teach the course along with a Roy Martin teacher. He said the program taught parents to take a more active role in their children's schools.

"An example is their graduation project," Aguirre said. "They were concerned about the safety of their children crossing the street to school, since the paint on the crosswalk had faded.

"So they decided to go to their councilman, Gary Reese, and ask to have the crosswalk repainted. They got it done in less than two weeks. This made them feel a lot more empowered."

"I think information about how schools work and how to get involved is important to all parents," said Susan Bonar, a School District employee who coordinates federally funded community programs and who will help make contacts between parents, schools and MALDEF in the coming weeks.

"But there is a cultural issue here where many of these parents come from countries where they're not encouraged to be a part of their children's education," she said.

Molina agrees.

"In an affluent community, when there's a problem, parents go to the school board, to the media, they get the problem solved. But the Latino community doesn't know how to do these things.

"Teaching parents about school policy and the politics of schools goes a long way toward making sure their kids get a better education and become better members of society."