Continued: Parents taking school concerns to Capitol

'Part of the fabric’

Districts such as Anoka-Hennepin, South St. Paul, and Lakeville are among the Twin Cities districts with active parent legislative organizations, she said. Sometimes, such organizations produce legislators.

Rep. Denise Dittrich , DFL-Champlin, started out with a then-new Anoka-Hennepin legislative action group in the mid-’90s. Now, she said, the Anoka-Hennepin parent lobbyists have become “part of the fabric of our education community.”

The Hopkins parents group, called the Hopkins Legislative Action Coalition, has a five-person executive committee, a business task force, a steering committee, a two-person liaison team, and 400 members representing nine schools. Members of the steering committee are each assigned to bird-dog a legislator who represents the district. Members call it a “legislative buddy system.”

“Our job is kind of twofold,” said Ward Eames , a district parent who serves as a co-chairman of the coalition. “One is to make sure the legislators know what’s going on in the schools, both good and bad. … The second is to advocate for legislation that we think will benefit public schools in general and Hopkins specifically.”

Goals for the Hopkins group are tentative now, Eames said, and are subject to board of education approval. Still, the lobbyist-parents will likely push for change in the way schools are funded and strive to eliminate such federal requirements as the No Child Left Behind school performance standards.

Motivated by failure

A failed levy campaign can galvanize parents to political activism. In Robbinsdale schools, where a proposed 10-year levy of $23 million a year was shot down by voters, and the district is considering $5 million in budget cuts, as many as 400 parents have signed up for information about joining the district’s Legislative Action Coalition, said Andrea Wiley, a Robbinsdale district parent is now being paid to work 10 hours a week as the coalition’s coordinator.

“There’s lots of anger and lots of parent involvement to tap into,” Wiley said. “We’re getting more and more people involved because of the failed referendum. There are lots of angry parents because of all the cuts being made.”

Not all districts have such organizations. Mounds View doesn’t. Neither does Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan.

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