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School administrators have made it a point to bring parents in to the school community in recent years. And thanks to volunteers and staff members, it seems more parents are involved now than at any point in recent history.

Parental involvement is a long-standing goal for Asbury Park school district Superintendent Denise Lowe [pictured above, left].

“The research is very clear on the importance of parents,” Lowe said in a recent interview. “Part of our job is to educate those parents who may not have had a positive experience in school or parenting. We have a lot of young mothers, and it’s hard. There’s no formula.”

When Lowe started her tenure in the district in 2009, Thurgood Marshall Elementary School was the only one of the district’s five schools to have an active Parent Teacher Organization [PTO]. Lowe sought a volunteer to create and coordinate a district-wide PTO. Nina Summerlin, then-president of the Thurgood Marshall PTO, stepped up.

Summerlin [pictured above, center] was honored with a plaque at a recent board of education [BOE] meeting for her creation of a summer program this year that provided day care for local children at $10 for the whole season.

Summerlin made it a point to bring in parents, encouraging them to stop by the camp once in a while if they weren’t too busy.

“It actually makes the kids feel like they are important — ‘you are my priority,'” Summerlin said. “That’s what I want the kids to understand.”

The day camp was just one of the PTO’s many district-wide efforts. Summerlin created the Asbury Park district-wide PTO as a 501(c)3 organization that functions separately from the school district and implements programs like summer day care and a student safety patrol.

Many parents are surprised the learn the PTO is not just a fundraising vehicle, she said.

“You try everything you can to get parents to understand they’re not just there for, ‘Oh, I need a dollar.’ You need to give back to kids and kids are our priority. It’s not up to the school district to raise the kids,” Summerlin said.

In the middle school, the PTO helps with the annual Sister to Sister and Brother to Brother socials, where students learn about etiquette and goal-setting. At Thurgood Marshall, the PTO ran a treat-making night.

In elementary schools and the middle school, the PTO has re-implemented the safety patrol program, which was defunct for 10 years. This has been especially valuable to parent participation because many Asbury Park parents were safety monitors when they were younger, Summerlin said.

“To [the students] it’s like, ‘My mom was on safety patrol and now I’m on safety patrol,'” Summerlin said. “A lot of the parents were like, ‘I can put your picture next to mine now’ … So now they have something to communicate about and a togetherness they can discuss.”

The 65 participants enjoy an induction ceremony in the beginning of the year and receive a certificate with a pin at the end. Children in safety patrol “feel so good about themselves” thanks to the program, Lowe said.

“You don’t expect the kids to take that much pride in a little pin,” Summerlin said. “It took off better than we expected.”

Currently, parent involvement in the PTO varies from school to school. At Thurgood Marshall, about 90 percent of parents pitch in, Summerlin said. At Bradley Elementary School about a third of the parents volunteer, and at Asbury Park Middle School, half the parents help out. Summerlin hopes to bring the high school’s numbers up to at least 50 percent this year, too.

“Right now, the biggest goal for this year is to get a lot more parents to step up and realize we do need them, we do need their help,” Summerlin said.

Summerlin sends PTO information home with students and through email. She also created a website where parents can look at events going on throughout the district.

“We really care that you need something to do in the community, and we’re going to do it,” Summerlin said. “That’s what kids need and look for … You have a lot of parents who are not working, who are home. And given the opportunity to step up, a lot will.”

A new parent center located in the Barack Obama Building — formerly an elementary school — has also helped moms and dads stay on top of things in school and outside the district.

The parent center features a room full of computers where parents can use the internet or complete the district’s GED [general equivalency diploma] program.

“It’s a place for parents to find resources and for us to know what their highest needs are and help them,” said Christine Coloma [pictured above, right], community relations coordinator and Title 1 bilingual family involvement associate.

The district also held a parent panel this summer to glean information about parental needs and concerns, Coloma said. Information found through that program will be presented at an October board meeting.

One thing the district has learned recently is that parents who don’t speak English as a first language may need more time to understand certain concepts. For example, Coloma, who translates for the Spanish-speaking community at meetings, recently found herself spending an entire PTO meeting explaining the concept of fundraising rather than translating what Summerlin was saying about it.

“A lot of Spanish-speaking parents didn’t understand … because it’s so different from what they did in their countries,” she said. “We’ve talked about starting some sort of a pre-PTO meeting where parents [who don’t speak English] can come and understand. We can walk them through the process so they can actually have a choice and a vote.”

District-wide, eight to nine percent of students do not speak English as a first language at home. Most of them come from Spanish- or Creole-speaking families. The district focuses on translating all notices, fliers and registration packets into these languages, as well, Coloma said.

Lowe, Coloma and Summerlin agree that parents are getting more and more involved in school district activities.

“I think parents feel more comfortable in the last few years in regards to getting involved, whereas before it was just that they felt like they were too afraid,” Summerlin said. “It’s led a lot more parents to let down their guard.”

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