Last summer a friend of mine became a parent coordinator. She had learned about the position from me; there was an email to District 2 parent coordinators, asking if anyone knew a qualified candidate.
Being a caring, patient, warm person, who raised two children, knows how to listen, is never judgmental, and genuinely wants to help, my friend was a natural for the job.
I’m still not sure, though, if she thanks me or curses me for roping her into it.
While she had listened to me talk about my work for a decade, and had spent time volunteering in New York City public schools, once she started the job, she had to quickly learn such esoteric Department of Education (DOE) acronyms as:
OORS: The DOE’s online occurrence reporting system. Reports of injuries, accidents, fights, and other incidents must be recorded within 24 hours.
BRT: The Building Response Team, a group of school staff members who meet monthly to prepare themselves to respond to and to lead in a school emergency.
SEMS: Student enrollment management system, used for pre-K and kindergarten admissions, and the movement of fifth graders into middle school.
Not to be confused with SETSS: Special education teacher support services, extra support offered to struggling students by an out-of-classroom teacher.
My friend’s responsibilities are different from mine, which is not unusual in the world of parent coordinators. She spends a few hours a day in the lunchroom, first monitoring students having free breakfast, then during the lunch periods, a chore often done by school aides. She heads up the school safety team, and is both the testing coordinator and the Gifted & Talented coordinator, positions that at many schools are filled by assistant principals.
Principals decide what their parent coordinators’ duties will be. Someone I know runs the library, assisted by parent volunteers. Another is the technology coordinator, responsible for hundreds of laptops. Definitely not in the official parent coordinator job description.
Every school has a different culture. When I attend professional development sessions with parent coordinators from around the city, I keep my mouth closed about how pleasant my job is, because often theirs are not.
Some coordinators are hidden away in tiny offices and never feel part of the school community. Some are in perpetual conflict with their bosses, the principals, who are reluctant to give them real responsibility and keep them busy with tasks no one else has time to do.
Then there is the parent piece. When the position was first established, parents assumed that the parent coordinator would be their advocate—which is true; or even their employee—which is not true. Now, it is understood that a parent coordinator’s allegiance must be to the school and the principal. That doesn’t mean that I don’t insert my own opinions, but philosophically, I fit in, which is not the case with parent coordinators in every school.
My friend who is new at the job is learning to negotiate the sensitive areas. She is figuring out where she stands on certain issues and protocols, and how she fits into the school community.
Last week she texted me after the kindergarten offer letters were mailed out. “Rough day,” she wrote. She had spent the morning consoling parents of pre-K students who were not accepted into the kindergarten, even though they were already in the school.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” she said.
I explained that while it was tough on those families, it was fair. Pre-K programs are a lottery, and those who receive a pre-K seat are fortunate. The families who are not accepted to pre-K pay thousands of dollars to private nursery schools, instead of enjoying a free public program. Once upon a time, admission to pre-K guaranteed admission to kindergarten, no questions asked.
Then the DOE realized that there were families who were not offered a seat in pre-K, and then denied admission to kindergarten, all by the vagaries of a lottery system. That didn’t seem right. After the system was overhauled and being in the pre-K no longer meant automatic admission to kindergarten.
“I wish I’d known that when I was talking to parents this morning,” my friend said.
She’ll be able to explain it next year. But her willingness to listen and sympathize and offer a tissue to a crying parent is much more important. Every parent coordinator would agree with that.
Connie Schraft is P.S. 89’s parent coordinator. For questions and comments, write to her at connie@tribecatrib.com.