STARTING A PARENT ADVISORY GROUP:

In 1987 one of my ideas, about which I now have reservations because of the way it was used, was to suggest to the then superintendent, Linda Woodward, that she convene Parent Advisory Groups for the three grade levels, in order to hear what parents were thinking about their children and the schools.

I thought if I were the superintendent, I would want a venue to allow myself to hear what people were thinking so that if there were problems, I could address them.

Dr. Woodward decided to form such groups, and I was chosen from Taylor High School to be a member of the high school group. 

This was the list I devised and that our group discussed or at least mentioned over the course of the meetings that were held: 

1.  "A vendor show so that those of us who sell things could meet with these vendors all at once.  It could include picture salesman."  My idea was for the show to be used by the volunteers in school organizations.  Instead, Dr. Woodward, changed the focus to using MY idea for the administrators!  I didn't get any credit for the idea either! KISD started holding "vendor shows," and it was a regular occurrence for a long time.  Don't know if they still do them.

2.  "Holiday activity guidelines."  This was at the time when public schools were starting to be politically correct and bending to the pressure of the leftists to change the social atmosphere of our schools.  I wanted to get them on record regarding what parents and schools could and could not do.  Pin them down, so to speak. Look at the response in the next article.  They didn't want to be pinned!

3.  "Bus safety and discipline." That was answered by putting safety arms on the sides of buses.  That wasn't what I had in mind, but superintendents like to spend money instead of dealing with real problems with concrete decisions. My son had gotten in trouble at school because he had a pen in his back pocket that damaged the seat on his bus.  His actions were stupid but not criminal.  When I confronted the bus driver who turned him in down at the corner (and I'm not sure how she knew it was HIS pen), asking to see the damage, she wouldn't let me on the bus! I had a bit to say about that! 

4.  "Curriculum to place the 11th grade term paper in English III in the first semester."  The students that I knew hated dong the term paper in the Spring. It interfered with too many things.  Unfortunately the ultimate answer of the schools was to do away with a term paper altogether!

5.  "Coaches notified that school lunches could be taken out of the cafeteria."  I can't remember what this one was about. The response doesn't sound like anything we talked about.

6.  "Providing a full time soccer coach in high school."  It was incredulous to the committee that in a neighborhood where every young child played soccer, that there wasn't a full time soccer coach.  KISD was growing and that position was needed. One has to wonder why they didn't think of this one themselves!

7.  "Parent Organization Council."  I know the PTA mommies hate it that my friends and I came up with this recommendation to have a PTA Council!

8.  "Parent Support Group for Challenge."  This was an idea that I wanted and the GT teachers wanted.  This group proved to be a way to push that idea. Interestingly when that committee was formed, Bonnie Holland wouldn't let me on it!

9.  "Kindergarten age grouping." This was my suggestion because in HISD where my children attended kindergarten, they allowed the younger children to come in the afternoon instead of the morning.  I had a child who wasn't used to getting up until 11 AM (it was SO nice!)  and so they had allowed him to attend kindergarten in the afternoon.  Of course this was before KISD decided to have all day Kindergarten which wiped out that nice accommodation. I had also spent time as a volunteer in the Nottingham Country library watching the kindergarten students falling asleep when anyone read to them.  They had no business being at school when they were five years old.  They needed to be home taking naps and playing in their own backyards.

10.  "Clarification of what constitutes the honor roll and the high honor roll.  Distribution of that information to all principals.  Reporting those qualified each six weeks from ALL schools to the newspapers." At the time KISD gave out mostly A's and B's to all students (that keeps everyone happy and thus there are no problems).  They then (at least most schools) reported those lists to the Katy Times, and they were printed.  It was a joke to see a majority of the students at a school making all A's and B's. 

11.  "Advertising bids, auctions, et cetera in newspapers besides the Katy Times." The reason I brought up this matter was that when they only advertised in the Katy Times they didn't always get the highest offers at auctions because no one interested knew about them.  They also, in my opinion, were hiding building bids because they had favorite local bidders who didn't want any competition.  Of course all of that doesn't seem right and didn't afford the school district the best prices on things. 

12. " Improving and implementing adult education." While there was some "adult" education at the time, it was not nearly as comprehensive as it is now.  I still wonder why the District has never offered classes in computer website creation.  Heaven knows I need such a course and would gladly have enrolled had there ever been one.  I imagine there are lots of others who would as well.

13.  "Review policies concerning parent purchase of school supplies.  Standardize the supply list among all schools and among all the teachers within a school so that parents aren't buying duplicate or unnecessary supplies.  Parents need to have this information before school starts to take advantage of sales."  This one has been a sticking point for me for a long time.  When I was on the Board I tried to get them to standardize this matter.  The forced purchase of these supplies is a hidden tax on parents of school children.  If you go to a store that sells the supplies right before school starts (at the present time) you will see a kiosk full of the sheets of required purchases for each school.  I write about it elsewhere on this website. There is no coordination within or between schools (and at this point in time ALL schools teach the same thing on the same day --they being MANAGED in every which way and direction--and these lists ought to be identical.  A responsible superintendent and school board would stop this nonsense and coordinate the matter.  Do I have hope that such will occur?  No, I don't. In the meantime, we're probably building new schools just because piles of Kleenex boxes that weren't needed or used but which must be stored have forced the students out into the courtyard somewhere!

14.  "Review Discipline Management Report"   It was obvious in 1987, that the DMP was not used or being addressed on a yearly basis.  It wasn't long before that lack of oversight became a huge problem.

15.  "Assure that the selection process for the Junior National Honor Society is done as mandated by the handbook and is the same at all Katy junior high schools."  This matter was of concern to me because I had seen it in operation at MPJH with my own son.  I had also been the National Honor Society sponsor in the high school where I taught before I had children.  I knew what the rules were.  Katy schools, at least at that time, made the students APPLY for membership!!! I had never heard of such a thing, and that sure wasn't the way they were supposed to do it according to the NHS Handbook. Of course nothing was done about it.  When I got on the Board, I asked for a copy of the NHS handbook just to see if anyone had one.  They didn't!  And they had to order one for me.  I'm guessing they still don't follow the rules.  When they don't follow the rules, that diminishes the value and the prestige of being a member of NHS.  It was never designed to be a reward for academic accomplishment.  While scholarship is the first requirement, the other requirements are just as important--character, leadership and service.  Like everything else Katy, nothing is ever done the right way!

16.  "Placement of typing as an elective at the 9th, 8th, or 7th grade."  The problem was that kids were being asked to use computers, but most of them didn't know how to type, and I thought the District should make it easy for the students to have this skill.  At least I could see the need for it down the road.  I love that they have to call it "keyboarding" which is another example of educatorese revealing their ignorance.  I hate the way educators make nouns out of verbs and verbs out of nouns.  It's just dumb.

17.  "Increasing availability of driver training in the summer."  My son was getting ready to need this, and I had already looked into the District's driver's ed program.  It was pretty sorry.  I paid for my son to learn somewhere else.

18.  "Allowing Little League, Scouts, et cetera to use KISD facilities at reduced fees."  My argument at the time was that the parents of these students paid taxes that paid for these facilities, and when they weren't being used by the schools they ought to be available to the residents for use.  The District had and continues to have the attitude that facilities are personally theirs and that the rest of us need to buzz off!  I'm guessing parents still find obstacles to the use of District facilities. 

19.  "Giving the Presidential Academic Fitness Award."  KISD made kids do the stupid things necessary to get the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, and it appeared to me that the Academic Award deserved more attention. Wonder what happened to all of that!!!

20.  "Purchase of athletic footwear."  It had come to my attention that while the District buys shoes for football players, they didn't (don't?) buy footwear for any other sport or for girls' sports.  I thought that tremendously unfair.

21.  "Announcement of team supplies necessary for parents to buy made at the beginning of each sports season"  The problem was that there was no uniformity among coaches and teams and schools, and when they waited too long, local supplies of what parents needed to purchase were depleted.

22.  "Allow girls to use gyms in the afternoons on an alternating basis with the boys." I urged the superintendent to cause the alternating use of gyms between girls and boys.  As it existed (and I'll bet it's still the same way) the basketball teams get to use the gym at 2:30 in the afternoon, and the girls volleyball team gets to come at 6:30 AM if they want to practice there!  Someone needs to scream Title IX on this one, but no one ever has.

23.  "Review statistics being compiled on physical education skills for KISD students."  I can't remember what this one was about.

24.  "Notify KISD substitute teachers concerning TECAT testing."   I was a sometime substitute teacher in those days, and I thought it odd that no one notified the substitutes that they too could take this silly test.  I took it. I was the first one finished, and when I got up to leave, the monitor came rushing over to tell me I couldn't get up until I had finished the test.  When I said, "I AM finished," she apologized profusely.  The test was idiotic, and I couldn't believe how many teachers made such low scores. Most of them were in HISD.

25.  "Offer something besides "outside reports" to provide the enrichment necessary in honors classes." My kids were in honors classes, and instead of upping the academic level of the content taught by the teacher, the teacher just assigned "projects" as a way to keep the kids busy.  My kids papered their bedroom wall with these stupid projects.  The problem, of course, is that the teachers are not allowed, are not in some cases smart enough, or for whatever other reason not able to teach at an advanced level in most subject areas.  That's not the way it has always been, and it is a shame that our educational system has failed in this regard.

26.  "Encourage teachers to teach and then give homework instead of the other way around thus relieving parents of the teaching process."  This situation was a real problem for me.  I had just gone round and round with a couple of junior high teachers who taught like this:  they would use an overhead projector to put up subject matter--history or math--in my son's case, and then assign homework which the kids worked on in class a bit, but mostly they brought it home and their parents or friends helped them with it.  So the "teaching" part of the equation was not being done by the teacher!  The next day, the kids brought in their homework, passed it to the kid in back of them for checking, the teacher read the answers to the problems or questions from her "Teacher's Handbook," and then recorded the grades.  NO TEACHING was occurring in the classroom! 

27.  "Budget more money for libraries."  I had found over time that the KISD libraries were horrible. I think the library budget is always the last item considered and mostly it gets cut.  Unfortunately, the library situation has gotten worse over time.  "They" have removed all of the classic literature (sent it on a plane to Africa with Henry Dibrell) and replaced it with what I call "pop books" --books that people without very high IQ's consider appropriate.  They might as well just put comic books in our libraries.

28.  "Provide language labs for high school foreign language classes."  This wasn't my suggestion, and I did not know that they didn't have language labs.  My kids' experience with a foreign language class was less than spectacular.  Mostly I recall having to make some fancy dish that the teacher wanted to eat that was supposedly from the foreign country being studied.  I never could figure out how my good cooking had anything to do with my kids learning a foreign language. One year I even made dishes for my son's friends who didn't have mothers who cooked or had the time to cook! Of course, what I later learned was that instilling the CULTURE of foreign countries was more important to the school than learning to speak the language. 

29.  "Standardize the process district wide for selecting cheerleaders.  Make sure that everyone involved knows the rules and make sure that they are followed."  Fortunately I did not have girls.  I say that not because I wouldn't have liked to have had some girls as children, but because I saw the trauma associated with cheerleading selection.  If you think the presidential elections are rigged, you haven't been through cheerleader try-outs!  Can anyone say "bias," "favoritism," probable pay-offs, and so on.  I'm told there are mothers who have  even sent their daughters to a new school with very few students just to avoid the competition at an old school where they knew their kid wouldn't make the squad!  There's just something wrong with that picture. This matter as well has never been resolved.

30.  "Select Citizenship Awards by allowing only teachers who have taught the kids, to cast a vote."  Too often only students whose parents teach (and therefore are known by those who are doing the selecting) are chosen until the students become seniors.  Obviously I had a personal interest in this one.  My kids got shafted all the time because of the teacher favoritism that was rampant in their schools.  Let me count the ways.....  I watched as my kids realized the unfairness of it all, but I simply told them it was a "life lesson" and that they should not be that way themselves when they had the opportunity.

31.  "If no pass no play is the rule, then all teachers should adhere to the rule. No "borrowing" of points from the next six weeks' grade, no extra-credit reports at the last minute, no special favors for vips, no excuses should be allowed."  I had watched as coaches bent the rules all over the place.  I didn't think the State had passed the No Pass No Play law for it to be broken by teachers and coaches in Katy ISD. 

32.  "Giving A's and B's to all students in elementary schools just to make everyone feel good and then holding students back in the fifth grade because they have not mastered the essential elements."  This practice prevents students from obtaining tutoring, and students are not living in a "real" world. 

I compiled this list of things that I was especially interested in, and presented it to the superintendent with this paragraph:  "These are items that we discussed fully or mentioned in passing.  I would like to know if there was any further action taken concerning them."

After I had spent lots of time at her committee meetings, I thought we all deserved to hear if there had been anything done to address our concerns.  See the next item for the superintendent's reply.