San Jose school parents say bigger, not better, is bad plan for parent volunteer program
By Sharon Noguchi/San Jose Mercury News
In a conflict studded with racial pitfalls and playing out at Trace Elementary School, a program to lure middle-class families back to public schools has run head-on into San Jose Unified's three-decade-old promise to integrate its classrooms. And as the district teeters along a fine legal line, it may end up alienating the very parents it once hoped to recruit. At issue is a parent-participation program that created separate classes for students whose parents volunteered to help out at school. The problem: Parents from the largely white Rose Garden neighborhood turned out in droves, while far fewer parents from poorer, mostly Latino neighborhoods were present. As a result, the school ended up with mostly white students in its Parent Involvement in Education classrooms. (more...)