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For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
115
1 and lots of folks show up through a lot of marketing and
2 knocking on doors, but even in May or April they did not
3 know so many of the parents did not know who their
4 child's teacher was, so we had to ensure that we
5 directed them to, you know, the teachers.
6 And it's just a real issue, and I don't know
7 why exactly. But I'm hoping that your program certainly
8 -- and I know you're coming to Philadelphia, that you
9 can stay around for a while.
10 Anyone else before we -- Enedelia.
11 MS. SCHOFIELD: One of the things I noticed
12 with the programs, they come, but don't see the culture
13 of the school. So when the funding ends, all those
14 great ideas leave.
15 I heard you talking about the actual cost
16 benefits. What do you see the vision of a program in
17 the school or a district after two years, three years,
18 four years?
19 I can see the initial cost being high, but I
20 also heard you refer to coaches. So the coaches, you
21 know, they get paid also or is it a volunteer component?
22 So you can see my goal is how do we make it part of the
23 culture of the school so it's a foundation of the school
24 so it lasts beyond the funding sources?
25 MR. VALLADOLID: It's interesting that you
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1 ask that question. One of the founders of the PIQE
2 institute, 77 years old and retired five times, his new
3 career, he's running around San Diego developing an
4 organization called A Plus Association of parents of
5 university students and he's trying to follow on to the
6 work that PIQE does in the school and develop actual
7 associations that have a leadership component that
8 basically harnesses the energy that PIQE has developed
9 of the parents to create an ongoing association.
10 Our philosophy with the parent institute was
11 to energize parents and get them involved in the school,
12 and we believe that once parents understand the
13 importance of their involvement, that they will act.
14 I have countless stories for you where people
15 have told me these children graduated and they stayed
16 working with their schools, and we're trying to get a
17 new generation, but the last generation of parents
18 doesn't want to leave. So we know that parents get
19 engaged with those schools. They stay engaged.
20 The coaches program, the biggest transition
21 we saw the parents themselves went through a
22 transformation, how they dressed, smoked, they
23 considered themselves now owners of the school. So they
24 become real partners in the school.
25 We know there are examples of sustained
117
1 involvement like what you're mentioning, but we also
2 know that if you don't organize it, it's not going to
3 stay. So the association idea is something if it's able
4 to work. We will probably begin looking at it on a
5 statewide base.
6 MS. MAZZUCA: I think we have time for one
7 more question.
8 Ofilia.
9 MS. BOSCH: These states you're training,
10 these organizations, are you encouraging them to start
11 from scratch? Are they going to be an arm from PIQE
12 from California? Are you trying to expand?
13 MR. VALLADOLID: If you know how large
14 California is, you know I'm not looking to expand
15 outside on an individual level. We have a hard time
16 keeping up with the need in California, over six million
17 students that we have.
18 An affiliate of the National Council has
19 asked that we begin working with other affiliates. So
20 the five states that came in, they were prepared by
21 National Council affiliates that are doing community-
22 based services in their respective states.
23 Like the Consiglio of Dallas, you had several
24 others that came, I think it was out of Philadelphia.
25 He sent in a couple of people. So they have come in.
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1 And as I mentioned, a lot of them are going to take the
2 best practices of PIQE to incorporate them into their
3 existing involvement efforts.
4 A couple of them, they actually want to do
5 replication models which are going to take one or two
6 years to move forward. And if they are replication
7 models, they will become extensions of PIQE. In other
8 words, they will have some connection to us. If they
9 choose to launch into another format, they can certainly
10 do that.
11 We'll share all our information, all our
12 knowledge with them, and then allow them to follow that
13 process in their respective communities.
14 MS. BOSCH: Being selfish, I was wondering if
15 anybody from Houston had approached you and if not how
16 do they take those steps to do that?
17 MR. VALLADOLID: I have a business card. We
18 can send information to your programs or to your states
19 and they can have contact with us on getting that
20 process.
21 MS. MAZZUCA: Okay. Thank you very, very
22 much. I want to give special thanks to our guests.
23 You've done a wonderful job.
24 (Luncheon recess at 11:45 until 1:00 p.m.)
25
119
1 AFTERNOON SESSION
2 MR. HANNA: I would like to call us back to
3 order.
4 During this part of our meeting we're going
5 to have briefings by three of our working groups with
6 commission deliberation and question and answer
7 following each briefing.
8 And so our first briefing is from our family
9 working group.
10 Enedelia, if you would like to fill us in.
11 MS. SCHOFIELD: This group is Micaela,
12 Ofelia, Rev. Hoyos and myself.
13 We had a conference call on April 10th and we
14 kind of talked a little bit about what our criteria was
15 going to be as we look at programs and recommendations.
16 Also we're in the process of compiling a list
17 of organizations that support parents.
18 The third thing we also set -- at least
19 started to set some time lines. We're not there yet,
20 but it's on our agenda.
21 Yesterday we met and there were some areas
22 that we discussed in the two hours that we were
23 together. One was just the -- our philosophical kind of
24 thesis statement, which is education must empower the
25 family, not just the child.
120
1 We saw our goal as drafting a recommendation
2 that could be implemented nationally and where we can
3 focus on the vision that all children have the
4 opportunity to attend college.
5 When we were looking at the criteria, we
6 looked at the program must empower parents, parent
7 family, easily attainable by the parent, cost effective,
8 and some of the basic ones that all research should
9 have, which is proven, and that is it's a proven record
10 and that it's effective.
11 We kept again looking at the focus of we
12 wanted to look at programs and recommend programs that
13 are successful and what is success.
14 Another thing was I think in a discussion we
15 were looking at reaching out to our parents and engaging
16 our parents and looking at the challenges that we have
17 when we're working and supporting parents, and it was
18 really I thought really interesting because all of us
19 were talking about those words, empowering, challenges,
20 barriers, reality of what our parents are going through
21 and yet also looking at what works for our parents.
22 So here were some things we could talk about
23 how we could engage the parents.
24 I don't want to mislead everybody. Though
25 it's on one page, it was a good two hours of some real
121
1 meaty dialogue. So I always say it's the process that
2 we went through, not the end product.
3 When we were talking about engaging the
4 parents, and I haven't asked Jose Hoyos, but maybe he
5 would like to talk a little bit about some things he
6 shared with connecting with faith-based organizations,
7 churches.
8 Would you like to share a little bit of what
9 you were saying? I'm putting you on the spot.
10 REV. HOYOS: Yes. We were having discussion
11 on how to get more involved with parents, the
12 relationship between the parents. We believe the church
13 and some other faith can play a very important role in
14 education and also to get out some of the information to
15 parents.
16 We believe most of the families even know --
17 most of the families basically in the Hispanic church
18 are church oriented, not just Catholics. This is going
19 to be very important to us how to reach out to these
20 communities, how to reach out to the parents who will
21 not attend the PTA meetings or whatever, but we believe
22 this is going to be a plus for our community.
23 We're going to reach out through church
24 bulletins, the newspapers in our church and other ways
25 that we can communicate with the parents to tell them
122
1 how important it is they have a new culture of tell the
2 kids and tell the children that they need to succeed and
3 to be part of the culture, that to be -- we were looking
4 for new heroes, and the new heroes are those students
5 who are finishing college, going to college. Those are
6 the new heroes for us.
7 Because everybody thinks in the Hispanic
8 community that -- what is the name of the -- Jennifer
9 Lopez and Rick Martin are the heroes of our community.
10 We believe that there is more than them.
11 And that's going to be good that every parent
12 will communicate to the kids, to the children and make
13 aware how important it is.
14 Thank you.
15 MS. SCHOFIELD: As we were discussing ways to
16 reach out and look at how we can engage our parents, we
17 were looking at something that's not traditional, not
18 just little fliers that go home and say come meet us at
19 the school library at such and such time, but to really
20 reach out and say where are our parents and where can we
21 go to meet with them.
22 We talked about laundromats, restrooms,
23 believe it or not, that woman or men may want to get
24 would not limit you. For example we were talking about
25 women were abused and start put things in restrooms so
123
1 they were more apt to read things.
2 Apartment complexes, to look at neighborhoods
3 and see other community areas there that can be used,
4 community centers, really hooking up on the medium
5 radio, TV, to see what it is we can do in partnerships
6 with them.
7 It was wonderful to hear David earlier talk
8 about the TV and the role that it plays with our
9 children and the challenges that it brings to learning.
10 And then we went on to talk about challenges and
11 barriers.
12 It was real interesting as we discussed and
13 dialogued and talked about our dreams and hopes, what we
14 could accomplish at the end of this commission. We
15 talked about how we're going to have to all work
16 together to integrate it, because we couldn't see how
17 the business work group couldn't be part of the family.
18 We couldn't see how the government part could not be
19 part of the family, could not see how the education part
20 could not be part of the family.
21 That's going to be one of our challenges, is
22 still put something together that is integrated and not
23 something extra, but it really works real with everybody
24 else's working group.
25 The other thing that we saw as challenges, we
124
1 need to look how to integrate that character, not just
2 the economics, but the social and the behavioral part
3 that maybe we need to change the culture of our
4 families.
5 We're not talking about the culture are you
6 Latino. We're talking about the culture to make sure
7 every child believes they have a right and opportunity
8 to clench education, which many of our children don't
9 see that as the next step for themselves.
10 So in the nutshell those are the different
11 areas that we discussed, and I think all of us as we
12 broke out after our break, it was wonderful to hear
13 David and the other people talk about the opportunities
14 and programs that are out there because I think it made
15 us a lot on the group feel like what we were discussing
16 last night really makes sense and we're not way out
17 there.
18 I had the opportunity to talk to Jolla a
19 little bit before meeting and again reiterating the
20 challenges that our parents had, the reality we bring
21 up, whether the immigration or social issues or economic
22 issues, but those are real issues that our families have
23 to deal with.
24 We have to come up with a program that's
25 going to be a real support to our program that's going
125
1 to meet our needs.
2 I hope I gave what we discussed.
3 MR. HANNA:
4 MS. SCHOFIELD: Are there any comments or any
5 questions? I'll refer to other members of the group if
6 you want to augment.
7 MS. ALVAREZ: I was going to add to one of
8 the things we talked. I think historically a lot of
9 times we have looked on the culture as being a
10 hindrance, a handicap to education, and rather than
11 doing that, taking that asset to education, how do we
12 incorporate that into what we're trying to do.
13 When we had these statement, the wording that
14 we had initially, my feeling is I think the group ended
15 up agreeing with that. I think when we consider what
16 this commission is and our set of group in particular,
17 we all felt one of the important things to do to make
18 sure we did take our culture and let the families know
19 that it isn't -- that there's a problem with the culture
20 that it's interfering with the education is that we want
21 to bring that culture into the educational system so
22 that the child feels that they've got an asset to work
23 with rather than a handicap.
24 MR. HANNA: Because I also -- I had wondered
25 about that for the family. Could you repeat how you
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