Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Principals argue merits, drawbacks of parent-teacher conferences

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Some principals love the parent-teachers conferences, others not so much. It really depends on the age of the student. Then, believe or not, babysitting is a factor here as well. In the Cascade School District, there are conferences in the fall and spring.

Cascade Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker, at the April 11 school board meeting, said it is kind of all over the board, in terms of how people feel about them.

“We have some staff members who feel we are missing too many instructional days. Some schools feel like the conferences are critical both times. Some schools feel they are critical at one time but not the other,” Motsenbocker said. “This is a good time to talk about whether we want to make a change or not. Some people would like to conference once, either in the fall or spring and bring back the other two instructional days. Some would like to keep both.”

It seems, with the younger kids, they want to keep both. With the older kids, it seems like they would like one or none, he said. Icicle River Middle School Principal, Mike Janski, said they’ve always done students-led conferences in the fall.

In the spring, it is more for the struggling kids.

“Last year, we were working through some book study and decided we would rather do our student-led conferences in the spring, where it is more of a presentation by the student to his parents what we’ve learned this year, with the goal our eighth grade students presenting to high school teachers why they’re ready for high school,” Janski said. “We’re kind of at the point where our spring would be more important than our fall. The fall would be more of a round-robin in the gym where parents could come talk to teachers. Spring one’s were always hard because there’s not many kids we are seeing.”

Osborn Principal Kenny Renner-Singer said he thinks every kid and parent should conference twice a year at the elementary level.

“I want to know how my kid is doing. At the beginning of the year, I want to get to know the teacher a little bit. At the end of the year, I want to sum up, how have they done? I think it’s important for us to reach out to families. I think it’s important for kids to know it’s important to parents and teachers,” Renner-Singer said. “The other way to go, let’s not do them at all and have four more days back. I would encourage us to look at an option where we use that time really effectively for everybody.”

At Peshastin-Dryden Elementary, Principal Emily Ross said it is important for all students and parents to meet with their teacher twice a year because they are growing so fast.

“When kindergartners start in October, they are just learning how wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Then, in the spring, they are reading. That change is so dramatic. It just makes a big impact on the families and they may not even realize it,” Ross said. “I would advocate for conferences, the more, the better, as long as they’re done purposefully and as a way to communicate with families effectively.”

Ross said not everyone who was asked was able to make it to the conference days. There were some parents who requested to meeting before or after the conferences in the evenings. If a parent can’t make it that, Ross said they reschedule until they can meet together.

In the spring, Renner-Singer said his teachers need to be targeting about 50 percent of their students.

“Look at the data. We should be meeting with at least half of our kids. That is a ballpark thing,” Renner-Singer said. “When you leave it open, you are just going to conference with the kids you need to in your class. One teacher might do three, another might do 20. To be fair, I put some parameters around that. In the spring, we have less attendance. Then, they just follow up.”

Last year at the high school, principal Elia Ala’ilima-Daley said they had 94 percent attendance in spring. This year, he said the schedule wasn’t ready, so they went back to meeting with the kids who were struggling. Some teachers did not have struggling kids, so they did not meet.

“Then, we started to hear from the union on equity, in terms of people that were meeting. Bill has helped them understand that high school conferences look a little different than elementary school conferences,” Daley said. “When we had 94 percent, the district was happy because we had attendance. Parents were like, I could have done that at home. It is tough to meet the needs of both at the same time.”

Daley said, at the high school, if they are doing their jobs, they should not have to conference.

“We’re calling during our office hours, if we see there are multiple kids on the ‘F’ list, we’re doing a student-assistance team meetings with kids and parents. I feel like, give us those four days back in the classroom. For high school kids, they see we’re off for three days before spring break. Let’s just take those days and go on a two week family vacation,” Daley said. “I’d rather have, at our level at least, the class days back. I know a lot of staff members, I don’t have any struggling kids, so I call parents to let them know their kid is doing well.”

If they use their office hours and make connections with kids who are doing well and kids who are struggling, Daley said at the high school, there is not a need for conferences.

Board President, Carrie Sorensen, said a few years ago, they eliminated the high school conferences while the other schools were in conferences, but they got quite a bit of feedback from the community that their babysitters were still in school.

“This was one of those situations, for the high schoolers, it is best not to have conferences. But when we do that, the community is impacted. If I remember right, that was a pretty big impact,” Sorensen said.

Daley said he sees more value to have the kids in class.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to accommodate babysitters, but from school standpoint, being in school is more important. You get everybody in, and the babysitters are there, but I just don’t think that it is valuable at the high school level. That’s two days in spring when you’re getting ready for testing,” Daley said. “We can’t control how much communication a kids has with their parent. If you are communicating, you know what is going on. We can show people how to access Skyward.

I just don’t think conferences are a good use our time.”

Board member Brenda Biebesheimer suggested moving the conferences from Monday, Tuesday, to Thursday, Friday, so the 50-percent of students that don’t have conferences can leave. Motsenbocker said then families would leave early.

Biebesheimer said families are leaving early anyway.

“We did try that before and it turned into more kids not showing up. The ones we had scheduled showed, so they didn’t leave town. There is a lot that did leave town. You’re always going to get that,” Janski said. “We tried Thursday and Friday years ago and our population definitely slipped. We lost a lot more kids. In the fall, we get very close to 100 percent. If we did Thursday, Friday in the fall, we wouldn’t get that percentage. We would wind up rescheduling the week after.”

Motsenbocker said he wanted to bring their perspective in. He said they are trying to make decisions.

“Seems like every single year, there are concerns and complaints about conferences. There is really no simple solution,” Motsenbocker said. “The high school would prefer to have two regular school days. That would work great for the school, but not for the younger kids, so they don’t have the ready made babysitter situation.”

Motsenbocker said the simple solution would be to let the high school have two days of instruction and conference the rest, but then they’ll have parents complaining about losing babysitters.

Sorensen said she would be willing to try it again and see what happens.

“The Teaching and Learning Council will work on that because they know how things work in each of the buildings. I don’t want to make a decision without their input,” Motsenbocker said.

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

 

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