Dads top dog at Valley school

When Jeff Langford comes to his daughter’s elementary school he always feels outnumbered.

“If you come here during the day, there are not many men around,” Langford said. “It’s mostly women.”

But on Wednesday, the tables had turned as more than 150 men packed into the cafeteria at Adams Elementary in the Central Valley School District to learn about a new volunteer program for fathers.

It was standing room only as dads in uniforms, and grandpas in suits and ties trickled into the school wanting to know more about how to help.

“I feel there hasn’t been enough involvement for dads,” Langford said. “I’ve always felt kind of pushed out.”

The program, called Watch DOGS, or Dads of Great Students, is part of a national volunteer program designed to get more positive male role models inside schools.

Any father figure is asked to commit to spending one day in the school. They wear a Watch DOGS T-shirt, and spend the day reading to kids, supervising on the playground or in the classroom.

“There are so many kids now without dads, or without that positive male influence in their life,” said Mat Howard, a dad and a member of the Adams Parent Teacher Student Association. “We want to show kids that dads do care, and we want to break that chain where dads are not involved in the schools.”

Howard, who as a man is a rarity among PTA members, is spearheading the effort to get Watch DOGS into more Washington schools. Adams is the first school in Washington to offer the program, but Howard has arranged for 10 more to try it statewide.

The program already operates in hundreds of schools in 30 states.

“This is a male involvement program, and we’re asking the dads to run it,” Howard said. “They pretty much have ownership.”

Schools pay a $200 fee for a start-up kit for the program, which was created in Arkansas by a father named Jim Moore.

Moore, like many Arkansas parents, was shocked by the deadly school shooting in Jonesboro in 1998, where two middle-school students pulled the fire alarm and waited outside with guns ready, shooting and killing four classmates and a teacher and wounding 10 others.

“I think the question we were all thinking was, when did kids decide that would be OK, when did that become a way to deal with life’s problems?” said Scott Huse, the vice president of marketing and development for the national Watch DOGS group. “More importantly, where were the parents?”

The answer was not in the schools.

Statistics show that 35 percent of all children in public schools live with just their mothers, and those who don’t rarely see their dads outside the home, Huse said.

The same lack of male presence is also true in the teaching profession, especially in elementary education.

According to a 2003 study by the National Education Association, only 25 percent of the nation’s 3 million teachers were men. Only 9 percent of elementary school teachers are men, compared with 35 percent in secondary schools, the study showed.

“Dads just aren’t taking on the leadership roles anymore,” Huse said.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of economics.

Lemar King brought his son, Dedrick, 7, to the Adams event Wednesday night. King said he works full time, goes to school at Eastern Washington University full time, and admitted that finding time to volunteer may be a challenge.

“But I know it would mean a lot to my son,” King said.

It’s good for kids to see fathers in a leadership role outside the home, said Jane Carpenter, the executive director of the Washington State PTA.

“The male is considered the head of the household in some cultures, and in those cultures that man has more authority,” Carpenter said. “So it’s good if that man is more involved with that kid.”

Carpenter said more men have been showing up at legislative assemblies in recent years, and more men, like Mat Howard, are becoming involved as officers in PTA.

In addition to supporting the Watch DOGS program, the state PTA launched an essay contest this year, asking any child who wants the chance to attend a Seattle SuperSonics basketball game to write a story about a how their father, or some other male role model, did something positive for them.

“We see dads in various ways all the time, but I think we all want for them get more involved,” said Phyllis Betts, the principal at Adams. “Why does any family need a dad? It’s a nice balance.”