Reaching out to Palolo parents

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Education Writer

Five minutes before the 9 a.m. start of a parent outreach meeting at the Palolo Valley Homes Tenants Hall yesterday, no mom or dad had shown up.

Palolo Elementary School and Jarrett Middle School administrators gather with parents in a community hall to discuss what can be done to help children succeed in class. The officials find it more effective to go to the parents than wait for them to come to school. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

It wasn't the first time that officials from these two schools have gone to the parents instead of waiting for the parents to come to them. One thing they have learned is how difficult it is to get parent participation, particularly in such neighborhoods where there are many immigrants, poverty is no stranger, and the most important question of the day may be how to put food on the table for dinner.

But by 9:30 officials were pulling out extra chairs to accommodate those who braved the rain to hear about what they can do to help their children succeed in school.

Even then the turnout was small — 12 people — but many of them left promising to tell others what they had learned and to spread the word and bring their neighbors to the next meeting.

"I'm going to take it (the information) to the community and the neighbors and explain it to them," said Lia Atiga, who has children at both Palolo and Jarrett.

Focus on support

Despite all the attention given in recent years to standards, testing and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the rules and regulations played little role in the discussion. Instead it focused on how the schools, parents and community can support the students.

"The bottom line behind everything else is how we're going to help our kids," Jarrett principal Gerald Teramae told the group. The advice was basic:

Get your child to school on time, make sure homework gets done and read the fliers that the schools send home.

The meeting came nearly a month after the Department of Education announced that 24 struggling schools — Palolo and Jarrett among them — would be taken over by the state.

School officials say a lack of parent participation is among the chief problems they face, and for all the optimism of yesterday's meeting, the turnout showed the difficulty they face as they try to improve student achievement and comply with the demands of No Child Left Behind.

Working with parents is especially important as the schools move into the critical Hawai'i State Assessment period — Jarrett today and Palolo next week. The results of these high-stakes tests determine whether the schools will meet the NCLB targets.

Helping the students means reaching the parents, said Dahlia Asuega, resident services manager for Palolo Valley Homes and grandmother of a preschooler.

Principals from both schools have been working at that for some time. Both have walked through the complex talking to parents and attended community meetings to let parents become familiar with their faces.

Both schools have learned that the tenants in the low-income housing area — many Native Hawaiian, as well as Samoan or Micronesian — respond better to a personal touch than to fliers that may never make it home, invitations to come to school, or phone calls that parents feel may mean bad news.

Knocking on doors

James Kealoha, a part-time teacher attached to Jarrett Middle for Pihana na Mamo, a Hawaiian program aimed at special-needs students, goes into the housing area at least three times a week to talk to parents about education — knocking on doors and handing out fliers — with good results. While parents might not come to the school or call the principal to voice concerns, they are receptive to talking to him when he's in the neighborhood, he said.

Gerald Teramae, the principal at Jarrett, says: "The bottom line behind everything else is how we're going to help our kids." Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Ranelle Asuega, 24, attended the meeting even though her son is still a preschooler in the Head Start program at Palolo Elementary.

"I think it's really great," she said. "This is our community. We need to find out what's going on and help out if we can."

Asuega said having Kealoha as a regular presence in the neighborhood helps get parents more interested in the schools. "It's like he cares as if they're his own kids," she said. "It shows a lot of dedication on his part."

Parents shared their own experiences with getting involved.

Anna Bower told other parents to take advantage of the free tutoring available under NCLB that helped her son succeed in school.

She also told them to check their children's backpacks and planners to keep track of their schoolwork and to make contact with the teachers.

"That parent is supposed to work with the teacher," she said.

But Dahlia Asuega, the services manager for Palolo Valley Homes and Ranelle Asuega's mother, also brought up some of the challenges that schools have in engaging parents who have traditionally not made education a priority.

"The priority was getting food on the table for tonight's dinner," she said. Many of the students live in single-parent homes with multiple siblings, and parents worry about welfare benefits running out after five years, she said, adding unemployment and drugs create other problems.

It's important to encourage parents to come out, she said, a responsibility she placed partially on the shoulders of the parents who attended the coffee hour.

"There's gotta be another follow-up meeting to this because I feel if everybody talked to the families one-on-one ... , word of mouth is the strongest way of getting people here," she said. "We all gotta pitch in. That's why I'm here.

"We've got a problem. How do we fix it and what do we do? How do I help the schools?"

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluladvertiser.com or 525-8014.