Buying Time Two Schools Are Paying Parents To Spend Time Volunteering In Classrooms

To encourage more parents to get more involved at their children’s school, Holmes Elementary principal Brad Lundstrom held ice cream# socials and hot dog feeds last year.

Hundreds of parents from the surrounding West Central neighborhood showed up, eager to# talk about their kids’ schooling. They were clearly interested. But the next day, few would show up at school to volunteer.

Faced with an unusual problem, Lundstrom came up with an unusual solution - pay them.

Starting this fall, two low-income North Side schools - Holmes and another school with similar problems, Bemiss Elementary - will pay small groups of parents a $1,000 yearly stipend to spend four hours per week assisting teachers.

It’s a step from the ordinary,” said Lundstrom, who is beginning his second year as principal at Holmes. “We realize we have not been successful with them.”

Though the project involves a small number of parents - 20 at Holmes, five at Bemiss - the goals are big. Both schools hope the first group will act as a seed crop, spreading word among parents who haven’t volunteered that the school is a “welcoming place.”

“We see the links between parent involvement and success clearly,” said Lundstrom. “If they volunteer, they feel better about schools, which translates into better-feeling students. We want them to know what’s going on so they can support their student better academically.”

Louise Chadez, a mother of two Holmes students and frequent volunteer, has seen the difficulites teachers face. As a social worker at Eastern State Hospital, she sees teachers performing many of the duties she does at her job.

“We are going to need more people in the classroom than just a teacher,” said Chadez. “Kids can’t learn when they are hungry, afraid, tired.”

The stipend project, funded by a federal grant, is targeted to poor areas, where parents traditionally have less time or inclination to volunteer at school.

Holmes, in West Central, and Bemiss, in the Hillyard area, have, respectively, the highest- and second-highest numbers of students receiving subsidized lunches in Spokane School District 81.

Both schools also rank near the bottom in parents partipating in the district’s volunteer programs, according to Marilyn McClelland, coordinator for volunteers. The 48 parents who volunteered last year at Holmes was half as many as at Indian Trail Elementary and one-third the number at Hamblen Elementary, on Spokane’s more affluent South Hill.

For a variety of socio-economic reasons, poverty translates into few parents volunteering in school. In West Central, for example, almost half of the households have a single parent, leaving no time to volunteer.

Administrators also theorized that many low-income parents have also not had positive experiences in school themselves; returning makes them uncomfortable.

”(Low-income parents) have a lot of needs they are trying to take care of,” said Lundstrom. “They care as much if not more than other parents.”

Before any paychecks are cut, parents will have to commit to an unpaid training period, which will last up to an academic quarter. During that time, parents are going to get a lesson in the basics of teaching, including ways to communicate in front of groups, strategies to tailor lessons to individual skill levels of students and one-on-one interaction.

Bemiss has put its first group of parents - all women - through the training. They won’t receive pay until after fulfilling their promise to spend four hours per week in the classroom.

In addition, they will be expected to help their children with math and reading at home.

Training parents has two advantages, according to Lundstrom and Bemiss principal Dale McDonald. Schools get volunteers who can contribute to the classroom and parents who can help their own students at home.

And parents see the schools from the classroom, not the copy machine.

“We really haven’t trained parents in what we need from them,” said Lundstrom. “When we have gotten them, we have given them meaningless jobs, like running off dittos. Now we will give them meaningful jobs.”

The stipend will increase each quarter parents participate. At Bemiss, parents will be paid $150 the first quarter and $400 the fourth.

If calculated as an hourly wage, the money is bad. But McDonald says the money could allow a low-income parent to pay a babysitter or fill a gas tank.

“We are trying to draw in parents who haven’t been here before, for whatever reasons,” said McDonald.

Other, non-paid programs also try to do that. Almost 2,500 parents volunteered in the Spokane School District last year.

To bolster participation at Holmes, the school will also be holding evening education workshops to tell parents about specific curriculum.

Bemiss will be holding English as a second language courses and instructing parents how to pass a high school equivalencey exam. Both classes will be held at night and will offer child care services.

Eileen Koth, a fourth-grade teacher at Holmes, said she learned the value of parent involvement in her previous work at parochial schools which “banked on” them.

She thinks the stipend program will work because it lets parents know that schools value their presence.

“If you have an inviting type classroom and let them know you are hearing and listening … you are more apt to break down barriers.”

Nevertheless, Holmes staff say they expect some criticism for spending $23,500 to entice volunteers, but say a shakeup is in order if schools are going to improve.

“You could hire 15 more teachers and have a lower classroom number, but if you don’t change the way you are doing it … you aren’t going to change the results,” said Brenda Van Matre, a fifth-grade teacher who helped set up the program.

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