$43 MILLION IS ALOT OF MONEY FOR A PROGRAM THAT IS NOT SUCCESSFUL. We believe that the Parent Coordinator Program must end, and the money - and cell phones - re-alocated more appropriately.

It is our opinion that the original goal of the PCs were to keep parents away from knowing what was going on in the school attended by their child(ren) and to prevent parents from speaking with, or "bothering" the Principals. In spite of some excellent PCs hired because the Principal is also doing his/her job and is honestly working for the good of the students in the school, the majority of PCs are, as Betsy Gotbaum reports, not knowledgeable enough to be helpful, nor do they honor their employment contracts by answering their telephones after 5PM, when working parents can ask the questions they need answered.

Give the cell-phones to the Principals, make it their duty to answer calls after 5PM two days/week at least, and use the rest of the money for books, soap, toilet paper, team supplies, and other items desperately needed by some of New York City's largest/poorest schools.

Betsy Combier

Gotbaum pushing ed buttons
BY JOE WILLIAMS, NY Daily News, July 13th, 2004

The department of Education's 1,200 parent coordinators all have cell phones - but are nearly impossible to reach after 5p.m., when parents need them most, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum charged yesterday.
"It is unfortunate that the very people hired to help parents make sense of the school reforms can't even return a phone call," Gotbaum said after releasing a scathing report based on a survey of the school employees.

A June survey of 99 randomly chosen schools found that more than three-quarters of the coordinators were not reachable by cell phone after 5 p.m.

Sixty-two percent never bothered to return phone messages - even worse than the 51% who were identified as nonresponsive last fall in a similar sting.

The public advocate also found that nine parent coordinators had nonworking phone numbers, and one school that was called did not even have a coordinator.

Gotbaum called on Chancellor Joel Klein to "get his act together" over the summer.

School officials said they were pleased with the performance of the coordinators, pointing to an internal survey that found 95% of them either met or exceeded principals' expectations.

They also touted a Quinnipiac poll from the spring, which found that nearly 60% of parents had some interaction with the coordinators.

"The parent coordinators are doing an outstanding job," said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the department.

The city provided $1 million worth of wireless phones for parent coordinators but many complained that the mobiles didn't work in fortress-like school buildings.
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July 13, 2004
Parent Coordinators Ill-Prepared and Hard to Reach, Survey Says
By ASHLEI N. STEVENS

Many parent coordinators in New York City's schools - who are supposed to serve as liaisons between parents and school officials - fail to have more than basic knowledge about educational issues, and to return phone calls, according to a survey by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.

The survey, conducted in June, is a follow-up to a report Ms. Gotbaum issued last November in which she found that getting through to the city's new parent coordinators was not always easy.

This time around, Ms. Gotbaum said, the situation is even worse.

"Six months ago, half of the parent coordinators did not return calls," Ms. Gotbaum said. "A follow-up survey found that parent coordinators are even less likely to be reached than when they were training."

The new survey found that nearly two-thirds had not returned phone calls within a week; they are supposed to return calls within 48 hours.

Ms. Gotbaum's office randomly surveyed 99 public schools by telephone throughout the five boroughs and reached 23 of the parent coordinators. Members of her office posing as parents asked questions about admissions, discipline, safety and curriculum. Although most parent coordinators were friendly, Ms. Gotbaum said, they were often unable to answer detailed and specific questions about topics including special education, high school admissions and third-grade retention.

The city is spending more than $43 million on the parent coordinator program, which began last fall. Each of the city's 1,200 schools has a coordinator who earns $30,000 to $39,000 a year.

The survey found that 11 schools did not have contact information for parent coordinators listed on the Education Department's Web site and nine parent coordinators did not have working telephone numbers.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education, Michelle McManus, defended the parent coordinator program, which began this year.

She said a survey conducted this spring by the department found that 95 percent of principals considered their parent coordinators to be meeting or exceeding expectations. Another survey found that 60 percent of parents had had some contact with their parent coordinators.



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