Parents Want Discipline and High Goals

That message came out loud and clear last night at a small, eclectic and very vocal parent forum in Pasco last night (since I was up at 4 am yesterday to catch the flight here, I didn't think the synapses would work well after the forum, hence this post a bit late).

There were about six Latino and Latina parents there, a red-headed mom married to an Arab-American and an African-American mom with seven kids. When asked about what they valued most in schools, discipline came to the top (a surprise for me), followed by high standards for their students and teamwork by the teachers. Adie Simmons, the governor's education ombudsman lead the group. Most of the Hispanic parents did not speak English well, so Adie had to translate for the linguistically challenged among us. It was a great two-hour conversation about what makes school tick, and how these parents, at least, felt about the public school system.