Bilingual Summit Stresses Parental Inclusion

Parents and students listen during a Spanish-language information session at the Dual Language Parent Summit, where the goal was to increase parental involvement. (Susan Biddle - Twp)

After giving his welcoming remarks in Spanish to Hispanic parents filing into the auditorium of Northwestern High School yesterday, Prince George's County School Superintendent John E. Deasy worried that with his less-than-perfect command of the language, his invitation -- "We want you to visit your child's school" -- might have sounded like an order, "Visit your child's school!"

But despite his "deadly accent" and any grammatical mistakes he might have made, Deasy hoped the message was clear. There should be "no barriers to accessibility with everything we provide in the schools."

In English and Spanish, the message of inclusion was repeated all day.

More than 1,000 parents signed up to participate in the school system's first Dual Language Parent Summit, and just after 9 a.m., several hundred parents and children had filed in. The summit's goal was to stress the importance of parental involvement and to open doors to a growing population that has at times felt reluctant to engage with school officials -- or unwelcome.

"It's a beautiful day in Prince George's County, where we're telling the world education is important!" Jorge Ribas, president and chief executive of the Mid-Atlantic Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told the crowd. The idea for the summit grew out of a lunch in May between Ribas and Prince George's County school board member Rosalind Johnson (District 1) who taught Spanish and French in the county for 35 years.

Deasy said Hispanic students make up 13 to 14 percent of the school system. Johnson said the need for better communication tools is dire.

"I spent more than 1,000 hours translating for parents," she said. "They'd call me down to the office because a child was sick, to help register, for discipline -- any need that any parent has."

Inside a second-floor classroom where Johnson led an all-Spanish workshop on parents' rights and responsibilities, every desk was taken; men stood along shelves at the back wall while young children colored or played electronic games off to the side.

"The future of your children is completely dependent on education," she told the group. Participants broke into small groups to come up with guidelines they could use to help their children succeed. "Make kids go to school," "be there physically and mentally" and "communicate with your children" were among the responsibilities one group of women discussed in rapid-fire Spanish. Montserrat Andrade has a seventh-grader at Greenbelt Middle School and a 12th-grader at Northwestern. She talked about the need for better communication from the school. "We want information to know the classroom atmosphere," she said.

One member of each group went in front of the class to share its ideas. They were enthusiastic, Johnson said, "because they never have the opportunity to take the floor and be center stage."

Rene Sanjines, who has two children at Benjamin Tasker Middle School, called the summit a great opportunity. "Most of the time, parents feel afraid to go to school," he said. Because of the language barrier, "they don't have information on how the system works." He hoped the summit would help parents insist on accountability. "I hope they feel this is important. I want to be part of this; I want to know what's happening in Prince George's."

At another Spanish-only workshop led by Johnson, parents talked about the difficulties they face. Recurring themes for parents were working long hours and not always being aware when kids skipped school or got into trouble. One man talked about kids wearing baggy jeans and the sense that no matter how difficult, parents had to guard against a street culture that's always calling.

In an English-only workshop on parental responsibility, two African American women, both parent liaisons in the school system, said they wanted to better understand the barriers that divide black and Hispanic students and parents. "It's important to understand the different cultures and groups coming into our county and to try to learn from each other," said Felicia Garrett, who has a child at Samuel Ogle Middle School and two children at Excel Academy charter school. "We're not that different from each other. There's so much friction between the groups that really doesn't need to be there."

As morning workshops gave way to lunch -- hot dogs and hamburgers as well as quesadillas, empanadas, tamales and salsa -- the Northwestern High School jazz band played and conversation flowed from Spanish to English and back -- at the same table and sometimes in the same sentence.

Julie Crespin Bermudez, whose daughter is a first-grader at Glenridge Elementary School, called the bilingual summit "wonderful." People stay away when they think there'll be something they don't understand, she said. The summit made Hispanic parents feel included, "not like they forget about us and leave us on the back burner." She thinks more parents will attend next year.

Especially since they now feel invited.