Let’s start with the basics – who are working parents? All parents are working parents. Whether working inside the home1 or outside of it, raising kids is a ton of work.
Having said that, of course, some parents have the privilege of greater schedule flexibility (including sick time off); some are also lucky enough to have family or other support nearby. And that’s great! However, as a school system, it sometimes feels that we’re assuming all parents have schedule flexibility, paid time off, childcare support at need, and/or the disposable income needed to obtain those things. In an affluent community, that might seem like a reasonable assumption, but the bedrock principle of public education is making schools work for everyone.
Many of the challenges faced by families are the product of structural things outside the purview of a Board of Education. However, there are a handful of tweaks that can be made, which would make life a lot easier for those parents who have less in the way of resources and flexibility.
School lunch
I credit my wife2 for pointing this one out. I think all parents recognize that packing lunch and snacks is one of the biggest hassles in the daily school preparation routine. For most parents I’ve talked to, the choice we have to make is balancing the inconvenience of packing lunch with the guarantee that they have a (reasonably) healthy, filling midday meal. I will say that Glen Rock’s school menu, at least on paper, is better than some school lunches I’ve encountered3. Having said that, the menus still feature a lot of processed foods.
The interesting thing about this is that other countries have very different cultures around school lunches. In France, for example, the majority of meals are prepared on-site, and there are laws mandating that all meat must be sourced from within the country. In Japan, Korea, and China, cultural foodways are prioritized over convenience and speed.What is particularly interesting is that the lunches in these countries aren’t just higher quality, with more whole, local, and freshly prepared foods – they’re not actually more expensive! The EU, for example, spends an average of €3 (about $3.40) per meal – the average in the US is $3.30, with list prices in Glen Rock being almost double that.
Many aspects of school lunches are effectively set by federal policy, well outside the scope of what a town BoE can affect4. However, it is certainly worth looking into the cost breakdowns from our current vendors, particularly the amount of money that goes towards ingredients vs. labor and other overhead. I would also look into whether our vendors are taking advantage of state programs that allow direct purchase of produce from in-state farmers, which helps with both food quality and cost. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of transparency in these matters.
Holiday schedules and aftercare
Here’s a screenshot of the district calendar for November 2024, along with the key.
That is a casual 6 school day holiday (10 days including the two weekends), only two full school weeks before Thanksgiving break.
November 1 was Diwali, November 5 was Election Day, and November 7 & 8 were Teacher Convention days. Not much one could do about those, and since Diwali is on the lunar calendar it was bad luck that it happened to align with the other two. But there was absolutely nothing to explain the 4th and 6th being off, apart from an attitude of “Eh, might as well?”. There was, to put it mildly, some consternation from parents I spoke to. This might seem obvious, but perhaps we shouldn’t assume that parents with young kids are in position to casually take off extra days. Even with a mandated number of instructional days, we can still do more to make the calendar easier for parents to navigate.
Personally, this also played into our decision regarding whether to send my younger son to the Early Childhood Program, or keep him in his daycare. We ultimately went with the former, but the larger number of holidays is a real cost we have to negotiate.
Another recent change is that the district aftercare program no longer operates on early dismissal days (of which there are 8 this school year). Needless to say, if one is depending on aftercare on regular days, that’s a nontrivial issue. I would definitely prioritize bringing back aftercare on those days.
Scheduling of events
This is a relatively minor one. It goes without saying that many teachers and other school employees are themselves parents, and have their own constraints. However, there are a couple of things that would ideally involve more after-hours options – parent-teacher conferences, and the federated HSA meetings. In general, removing barriers to parent participation is a useful goal.
Speaking of the federated HSA meeting, it was surprising to note that not a single member of the BoE attended in their official capacity, despite it being on the agenda. I’ll have more to say about the relationship between the BoE and HSAs at a later date, but needless to say I don’t find that acceptable.
The takeaway
There is pretty much universal agreement that parent participation in education has a huge effect on student success. By making things a little easier for parents in very achievable ways, it will allow them to dedicate more time to things that will make a difference in the classroom.
- Good books on the lack of compensation for household labor are Silvia Federici’s Revolution at Point Zero and Emily Callaci’s Wages for Housework; the 1975 Icelandic Women’s Strike is also fascinating history. ↩︎
- The more intelligent and accomplished member of our household. Sadly, she’s not eligible to run for BoE herself. ↩︎
- I visited an elementary school in the South Bronx – district 12, at the time and possibly still the poorest single district in the country – to help with some teacher professional development. They “treated” us to lunch. It was a (literally) visceral reminder of the inequalities in public education. ↩︎
- Though some of those federal policies set minimum standards – we can still aim higher as a district. ↩︎
Leave a Reply