GILROY
– The high school’s parent club is starting a membership drive
and asking parents for donations to support teachers and start a
college scholarship program. The group is newly motivated due to
its official fund-raising job, in spite of relatively low
membership.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – The high school’s parent club is starting a membership drive and asking parents for donations to support teachers and start a college scholarship program. The group is newly motivated due to its official fund-raising job, in spite of relatively low membership.
To solicit donations and attract more parents, the club’s co-presidents, Jackie Stevens and Denise Baer-Apuzzo, are drafting a letter that will be sent to all Gilroy High School parents in either English or Spanish.
“We’re trying to get a parent club going so that teachers can have access to resources that they will not get just through the district budget,” Baer-Apuzzo said. “If we get over $5,000, we’ll have a pot of money for teachers to be able to come and get supplies.”
The club’s first goal is to collect between $5,000 and $10,000 from the parents of about 2,500 students.
The amount of each donation will be up to the parents, Baer-Apuzzo said. Depending on the amount received, she said, the parent club may also start an annual scholarship for a college-bound senior.
Apuzzo, who has three children in Gilroy Unified School District, said the GHS Parent Club now functions much like those at other elementary and middle schools in the district.
Taking on the role of fund-raiser, the parent club this year heads in a more traditional direction from its previous role as primarily a communication source.
At the club’s December meeting, officers were elected and bylaws adopted for the first time in its three-year existence. The officers ran their first meeting last Wednesday.
“The last parent group, by design, was more for informational purposes and not so much activity and fund raising,” said Greg Camacho-Light, assistant principal of GHS. “(This group) wants to be involved in supporting the school, and they want to be involved in helping the students.”
The new direction has served the group well, he said.
“There’s a lot of new enthusiasm and energy,” he said.
At each meeting, parents generally discuss one particular topic, such as athletics or the block schedule of two-hour-long classes, and have a question-and-answer period with Principal Bob Bravo.
“Everybody’s invited,” Baer-Apuzzo said, “and we get the word out by the daily bulletin and in The Dispatch and calling all the registered parents.”
Two parents attending the club’s most recent meeting told Baer-Apuzzo they came because they received a recorded message from the school’s automated caller, she said. Another parent had received an e-mailed version of the students’ daily bulletin, available to those who register on the GHS Web site (www.gilroyhighschool.com).
Attendance, which fluctuates between about 12 to 20 parents, is also comparable to that of other parent clubs, Baer-Apuzzo said. One small group of parents usually attends each meeting but new parents are there every time, as well. However, GHS has about 2,500 students, compared to middle schools, which have fewer than 1,000, and the large elementary schools have about 700.
However, some parent club members and backers caution against disparaging the club’s low attendance, saying that a smaller club can be just as effective as a larger club.
Speaking at a recent school board meeting, Trustee Bob Kraemer said he thought the GHS Parent Club was able to conduct productive meetings and accomplish much, in spite of relatively low attendance numbers.
Camacho-Light agreed.
“You want large numbers, but at the same time, you understand that there are so many groups at the high school that parents are involved in,” said Camacho-Light, noting that athletics booster clubs and the Grad Nite committee attract large numbers of parents. “There are so many parents that are actively involved in their kid’s education many nights of the month.”
The way parents get involved can mean more than having large turnout, Baer-Apuzzo said.
“I don’t expect that we’re going to get a lot of people because I know that, with high school parents especially, a lot of them are working full time or are busy and just aren’t able to get to meetings,” Baer-Apuzzo said. “I don’t really care if there’s 20 or 100 parents that show up – we’d like to get more of an atmosphere at the high school like there are at the middle and elementary schools.”
She would like to see more parents on campus, whether “hanging out” at special events or volunteering with teachers in classrooms.
Other campus groups also struggle to get parents involved and raise money, almost to the point where they are competing against each other, said Maria Gurich, a GHS parent who until last month was co-chair of Grad Nite 2004, the all-night safe and sober graduation celebration.
The Grad Nite committee starts recruiting parents of GHS seniors at the end of their child’s junior year. Monthly work meetings are attended by between 20 and 25 parents, Gurich said, but many more volunteer for the big event.
“Getting them to come out for the work is a little harder,” she said.
Gurich works at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill and said that parent club also pushes for more involvement.
“It’s the same thing, I think, at every school,” Gurich said. “It’s hard because at school, every group is trying to raise money and you don’t want to hit the same people over and over again.”
Still, the parent club is trying to pull more ideas from a larger group of parents. The club is trying to schedule its February meeting to coincide with the principal’s advisory group for Spanish speaking parents.
“The idea is that if we can be together as a larger group in a question-and answer-time with Mr. Bravo, … we can do that,” Camacho-Light said. “You have more people, more participation, more energy and more discussion.”
