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| William B. Travis Academy Principal Mari Smith (right) works closely with PTA President Kristin Cartwright to ensure the magnet school maintains a sense of community. |
Inside the gym of Adelle Turner, an elementary school in South Oak Cliff, about 50 boys and girls have arrived for their first day of basketball practice. Their eyes are wide and their smiles are bright, but they temper their enthusiasm and stand still when the coach speaks.
The man who has their full attention is Michael Thornton, an older gentleman dressed in a dark sleeveless t-shirt and matching shorts. His warm grin hardly cuts a stern presence, but his demeanor suggests he’s in charge. For a full hour, every single kid does exactly what is asked of him. As Thornton’s piercing voice rattles through the rickety gym like an alarm at a fire hall, they run through a demanding series of passing, dribbling, and movement drills without ever taking a shot. He also makes clear to them that if they struggle in the classroom, he will make sure they never take the court.
What is unusual about this scene is that Thornton is not a school employee. For the past seven years, Thornton has been president of the Adelle Turner Dads’ Club, one of many highly engaged parent groups within DISD. At a district suddenly immersed in crisis and chaos after announcing a massive shortfall in its operating budget, it’s often the mothers and fathers—and in Thornton’s case, the grandfathers—who are filling key roles in the day-to-day activities of a school. They don’t merely sit in the dunking booth at the annual carnival. These days, parent-run groups in Dallas public schools are more like sophisticated nonprofits, with as many as several dozen board members tending to everything from public relations to social work.
At Adelle Turner, the Dads’ Club organizes the basketball camp for the elementary school. The club also manages and funds the athletic department, supervises the morning drop-off of nearly 500 students, and does the landscaping around the aging building. If a toilet was clogged in the boys’ room, it wouldn’t take more than a messy flush or two before a father showed up on campus with a mop and a plunger.
More important than anything else they do at the school—and, trust us, there’s a lot more—the Dads’ Club at Adelle Turner will seek out and help troubled kids. They’ll buy them clothes or meet with their teachers to talk about how they’re doing. Or they may show up at the school unannounced with their arms crossed and their eyes peering sternly into the classroom at the children they feel need guidance.
“We have a lot of single moms and deadbeat dads,” says James Modkins, who is replacing Thornton as Dads’ Club president. “My philosophy is, you always want to be involved in a child’s life, even if it’s not yours, because you never know how he or she is going to grow up. Even if you’re going down the wrong path, we can bring you back.”
That could be the motto of the PTA at Withers Elementary School, located in North Dallas. There, the school’s parents aren’t content to hold the occasional bake sale. Instead, they’re trying to convince moms and dads who send their children to any of the nearby private schools to come back home.
“For me, when I was growing up, it was a given that you went to your neighborhood public school, but things are changing and there is an abundance of private school choices,” says Abbey Adcox, who serves as the school’s PTA president and who has a first-grader at the school. “But there is a real strong desire among those who have chosen neighborhood schools to let people know this is an option.”
To do that, the Withers PTA organizes a public relations campaign, hosting a series of neighborhood coffees. They also put on a preschool story time at the school to show off the library to parents who are considering sending their children to Withers. There, teachers and even the principal may be present.
At a school like Withers, it can be a challenge to make sure the PTA reflects the makeup of the school as a whole. Anglo parents who live in stately homes in North Dallas know how to run an effective organization. But it’s a little more difficult to run an inclusive one, given the cultural dynamics at play at an American public school. At Preston Hollow Elementary, less than five miles away from Withers, a few well-meaning parents made news two years ago when a federal judge linked them to a pattern of segregation against black and Hispanic children.
Among the examples the judge cited was a brochure the PTA published designed to recruit local parents to Preston Hollow. The brochure featured almost all white children, even though the school was largely Hispanic. At Withers, the PTA got the memo: be as inviting and inclusive as possible. Realize the demographics of the district and your neighborhood have changed since you went to school. Most of all, understand that even a giving, good-hearted PTA can seem intimidating to working-class and Latino parents.
“No matter what we’re doing, however we communicate, we make sure it’s communicated in English and in Spanish,” Adcox says. “We try to be sensitive to socioeconomic differences too. We do some events at someone’s home and some at the school—just in case going into someone’s home is a barrier.”
Still, even a PTA like Withers’ that is mindful of race and class may end up looking as WASP-y as the crowd at a John Mayer concert. There are a lot of factors at work here. For one, first-generation Hispanics may feel uncomfortable with the whole concept of a PTA, which is a distinctly American institution.
“Hispanic parents have a different relationship with the school and the whole educational system here than they did in their native countries,” says James Martinez, the spokesperson for the National Parent Teacher Association in Chicago. “They’re more hands-off and look at the school district the same way they look at a church. You would never question a priest, and they feel the same way about a teacher or a principal.”
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| Adelle Turner Principal Wendy Hawthorne with (left to right) Dads’ Club members Michael Thornton (who doubles as the basketball coach), Sidney Owens, and James Modkins. |
That local PTAs recognize cultural differences—and, in many cases, relish them—is another sign that they’re no longer a collection of housewives in tennis skirts. The professionalism of these organizations is key. Throughout DISD, parent groups operate like sleek enterprises, acting, in a way, like the local operations center of a school. If they’re not perfect, it’s hardly due to a lack of effort.
At Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas, the PTA has 300 members, dozens of whom chair boards with very targeted missions. These missions include fundraising, of course, but also providing scholarships for students and teachers and recruiting outside speakers. Such a wide range of efforts and goals results in a parade of parents marching through the school every day. If that sounds disruptive or annoying, principal Ruth Vail finds the silver lining.
“The more involved parents are, the more transparent your campus is and the more parents give you feedback,” she chuckles, not having to say that occasionally that “feedback” isn’t welcome.
Still, Vail, a graduate of Woodrow, recognizes the strong role the PTA plays at her school. Recently, she sat down with about 10 parents from the PTA to brief them about the upcoming budget cuts. Vail says you wouldn’t have seen that level of communication when she was a student.
At William B. Travis Vanguard Academy, a magnet school for talented and gifted kids in the fourth through eighth grades, the PTA operates with a precision and scope so impressive it seems as though it must be a for-profit enterprise. In addition to their regular monthly gatherings, the PTA breaks off into committee meetings. It’s hard to imagine how they find the space. At Travis, the parents have an incentive committee, a membership committee, a fall festival committee, an orientation committee, a community service committee, and an auction committee.
“Part of the reason why everyone is so active is that, with being a magnet school, the kids have to apply and are then bussed from all over the city,” says Mari Smith, who has served as the school’s principal since it was founded in 2000. “You don’t run into other parents in the grocery store or in church. You want to have your hand on the pulse of the school, and this is a way to network with other parents.”
On a recent Tuesday evening, the mothers and fathers of Travis host the school’s annual picnic at Cole Park, just north of the West Village. Parents of all backgrounds talk over burgers, while black, white, and Hispanic kids play games and gossip under tall trees. It could be the set of a Disney movie or a Benetton ad.
Remember that sullen vice principal you had who stood quietly in the corner at every school function, looking as if he was ready to throw everyone, moms and dads included, in detention? Here, Travis’ young assistant principal, Sonya Palmer, chats happily with parents as if she’s known them since college.
These days, if you read only the headlines about DISD schools, things look dire. But on this September evening at Cole Park, as the skyline of downtown Dallas looms in the background, a brighter picture emerges. Whether that’s a look into the future of DISD or a snapshot of the rare school that got it right, it may be up to the parents to decide.
To check out the entire Dallas Public School issue of D Magazine, click here.
