What role do parents play in educating their children? There are hundreds of answers, but one point of agreement: parents need to be involved. Yet what happens when parents want to participate but find themselves excluded from the decision-making process of the school system?

The problem becomes more complex when a family is poor, from an ethnic minority or has recently arrived in Canada. However, thanks to the Third Avenue Resource Centre, a solution is in sight. It's called Parents in Action for Education. The program's objective is to help parents gain confidence and to demand a greater, more active role in the decisions affecting their children's education.

Connecting Parents to the Schools

The project started in February 1999 in three Montreal communities: Cartierville, Petite-Bourgogne and Villeray. In these neighbourhoods, parents are often immigrant mothers raising children alone. They are struggling to understand a school system undergoing profound changes (school boards based on language rather than religion, new legislation giving parents greater powers in the running of the schools).

The project began with the hiring and training of three community leaders-women active in their neighbourhoods and interested in helping others. Working closely with each other and neighbourhood families, the women helped organize three public forums so parents could voice their concerns and learn where to go for help. From these forums developed a network of almost 150 parents. Working in small groups, they tackled many issues including the rising cost of school fees and how to get parents involved in school governing boards.

The Hard Work of Creating Change

There have been setbacks: all three community leaders took jobs elsewhere, so new leaders had to be hired and trained. Several families involved in the network moved away. Yet the work continues. This fall, the new leaders are back in the neighbourhoods. The centre will be offering leadership training for parents as well as a public education campaign to raise awareness of the issues involved in making the educational system more responsive to the community. Change is happening and parents, individually and collectively, are making a difference in their children's education.

For more information, contact:

Danielle Landry
Coordinator
Third Avenue Resource Centre
1857 de Maisonneuve Avenue West
Montreal, QC H3H 1J9
Tel: (514) 279-1286
Fax: (514) 279-6311
crta@rocler.qc.ca