New Roomparent Council: What's the Buzz
Roomparents at San Francisco Day School have always had to be good at organizing potluck dinners, corralling drivers for field trips, and coordinating teacher gifts. Now they’ll have to add a new talent to the list: listening to parents.
Listening to parents’ concerns, that is — the courtyard “buzz” that gets louder the longer it’s allowed to go unaddressed.
New Head of School David Jackson has created the Roomparent Council,
a new organizational framework meant to facilitate better communication between parents and the administration. In essence, roomparents will act as a liaison between parents and administrators, helping to disseminate information and solve problems before they fester. “There’s a fundamental need for parents and the administration to communicate with each other thoughtfully, candidly, and confidentially,” Dr. Jackson says.
Beth Berliner, board member and roomparent, agrees that there is a need for a new kind of communications forum. “Having worked on the communication task force last year,” she said, “there was a concern from parents about how to communicate issues that may be going on in school to the administration. I think this council will be a place where issues can be safely discussed and the benefit all around will be great.”
Previously, only two forums at SFDS have allowed parents to raise issues of general concern. Parents could either schedule one-on-one meetings with the head of school or other administrators, or they could attend the grade-level coffees and raise their issues there.
“Neither of these forums was an effective way to have these conversations,” explained Dr. Jackson. On the one hand, parents are reluctant to sit down with administrators unless the issue is really important, as they want to save their face-to-face time for the really big issues that involve their children. Grade-level coffees don’t fare much better, he says, comparing them to press conferences. Even if the information is very accurate, parents often come out of such meetings believing they’ve heard a lot of “spin.”
Parents have a right to raise issues and concerns about the School, but they need a way to communicate that feels more honest and direct. “The rule is, we’re going to be absolutely straight with each other,” he says about the Roomparent Council.
“In prior years, there was no forum between an official policy announcement and the talk in the courtyard,” says Elaine Foppiano, President of the Parents Association. “With the Room Parent Council there will be a few informed emissaries out there who parents can reach out to, and talk with, when they hear things, perhaps from their kids, that concern them or that they just want to know more about.”
The School’s 38 roomparents will meet monthly — or more often, as needs arise. They’ll meet with Dr. Jackson, Upper School Head Nancy Clark and Lower School Head Sue Collentine in the library. Roomparents will be encouraged to think of their role as gathering information and helping to solve problems.
The council has already met twice to deal with current issues. The reaction from roomparents has been mixed so far. Many roomparents are enthusiastic but there is also uncertainty about the mechanics.
Tom Scharffenberger, a sixth-grade roomparent, found the meeting to be very informative. “I think the roomparent council is another link of communication between the School and the parents,” he says. “It will give everyone an opportunity to discuss issues in an open forum and to find out what trends the administration is seeing and where the School needs help.” He says that this is one of the reasons he wanted to become a roomparent.
Susan Getz, a seventh-grade roomparent, said she’s unsure about the whole process and wonders if she’s equipped to handle parent issues. “My initial reaction is, this is not what I signed up for when I signed up as a roomparent.”
But Susan does like the idea of more and better communication at the School, which she thinks is greatly needed. Right now she has a wait-and-see attitude. “Maybe it’s worth a shot,” she says.
Dr. Jackson admits it will take time for the community to get used to the new forum, but parents need to give the process time to work and not jump to what he calls the “default expectation” that “announced procedures don’t really work." He looks forward to continuing to partner with parents to create more meaningful avenues for dialogue.
|
