Mesa school district discusses parental rights, involvement in education

At the July 23 Mesa Public Schools Governing Board meeting, members of the governing board discussed various ways for parents to be involved in their children’s education, mainly for establishing a parental advisory committee for the district.

According to a board presentation, the parent advisory committee would evaluate district procedures with regards to parental involvement in educational activities, including areas such as homework, discipline and attendance, and then sharing its findings and suggestions for improving parental involvement with the board. These meetings would happen each semester.

To fill up the committee, members will be appointed annually in July. Each board member will appoint three parents or guardians of currently enrolled district students, two currently employed non-administrative district staff and two currently employed district administrators. The committee would be chaired by the superintendent.

This committee is different from the Mesa parent council, which meets quarterly and mainly consists of parents of enrolled students in PTO or SIAC roles, and mostly discusses timely topics as opposed to evaluating district procedures.

The current timeline for the committee is board recruitment in August, organizational meetings on Sept. 16, a Semester 1 meeting on Nov. 5, Semester 2 meeting on April 1, and a governing board presentation May 13.

“Laying out our three areas of focus for the year - academic and instructional development, community engagement and safety, and then organizational and operational efficiency,” said MPS Superintendent Dr. Andi Fourlis. “This committee aligns with community engagement and safety.”

Board member Rachel Walden asked if there are any other districts that have started a program like this.

“When districts are moving to model policies, they will have the same alignment because of the statutes and policies that I referred to,” Dr. Fourlis said. “...Our procedures are aligned with those policies.”

MPS Clerk Joe O’Reilly said he hopes that when board members appoint district staff to the committee, that they should pick staff members who are parents as well.

“I encourage my fellow board members...if you’re going to appoint district staff, appoint parents who are district staff if you can. So that the majority of people on the committee are parents,” O’Reilly said.

MPS Board President Marcie Hutchinson agreed with O’Reilly’s assessment and also said the committee should have members from multiple grade levels and different regions of Mesa in order to ensure diverse opinions and input.

“Not only do we want to make sure that we got different grade levels and different programs represented, but also all of the geographic areas of Mesa,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve got to have a good balance of west and east side and to represent the various schools. That’s going to be something we are going to revisit.”

MUSD — also known as Mesa Public Schools — is the largest public school district in Arizona and has six high schools, nine junior high schools, 55 elementary schools and 18 choice and success schools.