School district may make volunteering mandatory San Jose Mercury News
If parent participation in classrooms is good, why not make it mandatory?
That's the thinking of some in San Jose's Alum Rock Union School District, where a committee is crafting a proposal to require families of all 13,000 students to volunteer at least 30 hours a year at school.
It's a tall order. The disparity in parent volunteers is as wide as the economic rift in the valley, as schools serving affluent families depend on moms and dads to drive on field trips and help with science projects, while schools teaching poor children often lack such involvement.
In Alum Rock, where 88 percent of the students are poor and 54 percent are language-learners, most of its 28 schools don't even have a PTA. But even as some critics warn working parents don't have extra time, trustee Gustavo Gonzalez is pushing volunteerism, citing studies showing that students do better when their parents are involved.
"We're trying to create a culture of strong parent-guardian-family participation in schools," he said.
