PTA/PTO/PA organizations - name, address, telephone number

Officers

Active members

functions)

Grade level volunteers

The above information should be compiled and discussed at community school council meetings with students and parents in order to inform them of the value, purpose and usage of communication in community organizations and then sent home with written instructions on how to use it. Information and instructions should be included in a "community school council information guide" along with other pertinent practical knowledge about the school-community and kept on file in the home and the community school office for immediate reference. Representatives of the council should be requested to visit the homes within his school district to interpret the information to the families as well as the purpose of the community school council.

Rather than the school compiling the traditional school profiles on students

of curriculum, PTA/PTO/PA programs, and school-community action in which the students are involved as learner-participants. Problems should be brought to the attention of the community school council, the central board and other agencies. These issues must be understood, accepted and solved to benefit the students.

Social protests by students around the problems which their classmates suffer should not be overlooked. In instances where the schools serve students under the age of twelve, these students should be involved in student government activities, encouraged to present their ideas to the community school council and enabled to discuss their problems with school personnel and parents.

The community school council should maintain an office in the school, preferably in the community room where parents may come in to volunteer their ser vices, for social purposes or to register complaints. Further, every opportunity should be afforded the parent to take his complaint directly to the teacher, principal or other appropriate school personnel. Copies of all community school council minutes should be kept on file, pamphlets, notices, and school programs, in the office, for easy review and inspection by parents and students.

The overall importance for keeping the school-community informed cannot be overemphasized. Regular communica tion ensures the parents' rights to be kept informed, to participate in decision

Power is the ability to influence or change a condition. In human terms power means the ability of a person or a group of people to make a difference. It is almost an axiom of human behavior for people who have power to use it in their own interest. For some, the borders of this interest may stop with one individual. Others enlarge the scope of interest to include their family, neighborhood, community, county, or even world, because they recognize the frail interdependency of people in all these environments.

The concept of a community school council honors the latter understanding of power, because it views the school and community as extensions of each other; what happens in one greatly influences what goes on in the other.

Because the community school council in the form described here is relatively new, council members will soon discover that much of the power they assume will be carved out as much by their actions and participation as by the decisions they make more formally.

The powers of the community school council will depend largely on several issues, namely:

1. Whether it has an advisory or a policy-making function.

2. Whether its efforts are deliberately undermined, cooperatively encouraged or left alone by the central board.

3. Whether it is able to develop a

meaningful relationship with its constituency.

4. Whether it can develop an effective consensus among its members. 5. Whether it can operate in non-ex

ploitative ways, i.e., decrease the possibility that it mobilizes local opposition.

6. Whether or not it can avoid unnecessary conflict with its staff - and can act - humanely toward them.

7. Whether or not it can have a positive impact on the lives of the students.

The powers of an advisory council are largely dependent on the systems that are being advised. The advisory council has no power to make decisions; it merely served as advisor. Suggested powers for a policy-making council were listed earlier. However, a given policymaking council may have fewer powers than were listed.

Certainly the mere possession of power does not ensure one that if one exercises it, it will work. The exercise and the "cooperation" of those over whom the power is exercised determines the outcomes. Moreover, if its applica tion does not have a positive impact on those for whom it was exercised, it is useless.

Power can be used to empower others, if one who possesses power sees his destiny as being tied to the destinies of others and learns to share it with them. Those who make the best use of power are those who use it infrequently but ef fectively.

One can begin to develop or expand one's role as an individual council men ber of collective councils, when he begins to formulate programs and strategies of implementation. An appropriate start is to begin to formulate answers to the following questions:

A. How do community school council members, first, put their own house in order? Assuming that the training events of the first year have been positively instructive, what more needs to be done within the council to assume that its members have taken on the new attitudes which are desired for students?

B. What kinds of attitudes and behaviors of teachers, counselors and administrators are desired? How shall the councils reinforce positive behaviors and attitudes, and discourage negative ones?

C. What kind of co-operative efforts can be effected by students, parents and educational personnel to change the attitudinal environment of the

schools?

D. What kinds of curricular changes are

necessary to support the new Black student image?

E. How can the basic skills of commun

ication, reading and mathematics be taught so that they contribute to the students' overall impressions of themselves as worthy, and also enrich academically competent individuals already skilled in the language of discourse and numbers?

F. How can other subject areas such as social studies, humanities (music, art, literature), and foreign languages be taught so that students perceive themselves accurately in the context of a multi-national, multi-cultural past and present?

G. How can vocational education be changed so that Black pupils are no longer being denied admission to those programs or if they are admitted they no longer are being trained for jobs that are either poor-paying or that are going out of existence? How can vocational programs be devised that train Black and other minorities

for the job demands of a computerized technological society?

Some General Principles About Power

Answering these questions, thus effective positive change for the education of Black and other minority group children presupposes that the community school council becomes aware of some general principles about those in power: People in power tend to "divide and conquer'' those over whom they have power; their language is designed to keep "the people" in their places and is one of oppression which is designed to get the oppressed to identify with the oppressors. Those in power put out the messages, "You can't fight City Hall," and "Don't ever underestimate the opposition."

Usually, those in power are more skillful in expanding their spheres of influence over those in their "charge" than they are in limiting their power. Unlimited power leads to an exploitative relationship with the powerful victimizing the Black and minority poor into a position of powerlessness. Consequently, the powerless too frequently tend to identify with those in power and to substitute their own values for the value of those in power. The victimized, on the other hand, acquire the skills - coping, resistance, and survival to exercise power from a presumably powerless position. They identify with those in power as a tactic only and not as a basic philosophy. Those in power have a need to be loved by those over whom they have power. Such love manifests itself as a controlling device rather than as mutual interest and effect. Respect exercised in this case is a reward for deference. Stated another way, those in power reward "the people" below them whose behavior can be predicted and controlled. Finally, power can corrupt, but it can

(a) develop a procedure and a process for determining who speaks for them and the criteria for selecting such spokesman,

(b) develop techniques and processes for

achieving "operational unity" among the various special interest groups within such communities,

(c) identify those decisions that can be made about their communities only by their communities.

(d) identify those issues which are felt and experienced and which, if effectively dealt with, will bring about an alleviation of pressures and the freeing of local energy for self-development,

(e) study and understand the nature of decision-making- informal and formal within institutions and how personnel can be converted into advocates for the local community in pursuit of their own special interests, (f) organize and educate one's constit

uency as to the issues and how they can lend their efforts by educating others, and

(g) develop a plan to mute and/or neu

tralize the expression of opposing sentiments by other "local influentials" who do not speak for the local community. (When such persons speak out, they should be urged to identify for whom they speak).

Teachers and principals should be helped to learn how to work with parents, students and legitimate community leaders and how to learn to be held accountable by them. In addition, the community school council must acquire the skills to enable the principal to do his job and reduce the pressure of the centray system on him. It must ensure his right to be creative and advocate in the interests of students.

Among a variety of change strategies, the following are suggested:

(a) legislative change,

(b) action by the local board of education,

(c) progression from PTA/PA's to ad

visory committees to policy-making committees: following a procedure of "getting one's foot in the door first",

(d) volunteer activities. to learn how the

school operates and to help the students, parents, teachers and principals leam the value of meaningful parent participation,

(e) systematic cataloging of the problems

of the system and education of the community,

(f) continuing and systematic evaluation of the school's programs,

(g) require that teachers and principals write out their educational goals for the year,

(h) foster heightened student investment in learning; assist their families in overcoming social problems and barriers to learning,

(i) involve community organizations churches, youth groups, sororities, fraternities, civic, business and so