School District Pushing $20M Parent Center Improvement Measure

In late April, LAUSD District 5 board member Yolie Flores Aguilar announced that she would allocate $3 million in discretionary bond funds to pay for improvements at parent and family centers at five Los Angeles schools, including .

Now, at the urging of new Superintendent John Deasy, Aguilar is encouraging local families to support her efforts to implement similar improvements in schools across LAUSD.

According to District 5 field deputy Eduardo Cisneros the LAUSD bond oversight committee will meet this month  to hear community feedback on Aguilar's proposal to spend $20 million Capital Improvement Program Reserve Pool funds on parent center improvements in schools across the district.

The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 18 at 10 a.m. inside LAUSD's headquarters on 333 S. Beaudry St.

According to Cisneros, the comments made to the bond oversight committee will be passed on to LAUSD's board of trustees, which will make a final decision on the proposal on Tuesday, June 14.

Ronald Polacios, a Director of Community Partnerships for Aguilar's Office, went before the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council last week in an effort to rally community support for the proposal.

He said that the improvements at the parent centers would include both the installation of new computers with Internet access as well as basic beautification work.

"Computers, Internet access, lots of technology--we need to provide better infrastructure to the centers." Polacios said. "The thing about many of these parent centers is that some of them have not been painted since the schools were first built."

Aguilar, who will be stepping down from the board in June, said that the effort to improve parent centers is part of her larger goal to increase community engagement in LAUSD's schools through the "Parents as Equal Partners in the Education of Their Children" resolution that she pushed through the school board last year. 

“We know in this district that we have many parents who are not familiar with the educational system, who may not speak the language, who may not feel comfortable being involved and engaged because of their status,” Aguilar said. “But if we were to support them, we know that they would become more involved. If there are barriers for parents to participate, we want to help them overcome them.”

Burbank, along with Garfield High School, Vernon City Elementary School, Gage Middle School and Huntington Park High School will all serve as "template" schools, where the model for a successful parent center will be tested.

Should LAUSD pass $20 million dollar resolution, that template will then be applied to schools across the remainder of the district.

HHPNC board member Teri Bonsell questioned whether it was wise for the district to be investing such a sizable sum of money in parent centers when the district was facing a $408 million deficit, which has resulted in the projected lay-offs of 36 teachers and staff members at alone.

Polacios said that community members often request that bond money be used to defray staff cuts at LAUSD, but stressed that doing so was a violation of State and City bond allocation laws.

He also responded to concerns that, even if the parent center improvements were made, the district wouldn't have sufficient funds to staff them.

"I know you're probably saying, 'what's the point of fixing and modernizing parent centers if we're not going to have a person in the center?'" Polocios said. "We have to see the glass half full, we have to believe things are going to get better.  We have to believe that if we improve the parent centers, if we have principals that embrace parents and encourage parent engagement, we can provide tremendous support. We have to get parents to understand, even at the minimal level, to understand what their role is."

Parent engagement has been a recently at Burbank, with some parents commenting on Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch that a small group of have alienated most parents and prevented them from taking a more active role in their students' academic lives.