Reflections on our first Parent Teacher Conferences

Dear Parents,
 
First thank you for your suggestions and comments – they help us in our drive to excellence. I want to clarify and respond to some concerns related to the parent-teacher conferences that have reached my desk over the last week.
 
CSS-MSE is committed to establishing strong parent-faculty relationships. We see the education of our students as an intimate partnership between parents and faculty. Essential to this relationship is providing mechanisms and spaces where meaningful conversation can take place between the two parties. CSS-MSE is working in this direction in the following ways:
 

  1. parents and students were all provided with CSS email accounts
  2. student, faculty and parent contact information is available on-line
  3. course homeworks and projects are available on-line; and a common weekly homework sheet is also used in class
  4. all faculty have shared their personal cell phones with their advisees
  5. both the principal and associate director have shared their personal cells with all parents
  6. all faculty and staff emails are available for parent and student communication
  7. we identified very early – one month into the semester, and gave early warning to parents of students we felt were not doing well academically and whom we felt needed additional support
  8. we have held 4 nights of parent-teacher conferences – lasting 4 hours each and in which parents can make appointments for 15 min conferences with individual faculty – and 1-2 weeks ahead of the DOE calendar
  9. additional individual meetings have been scheduled when requested by parents who cannot make it during the 4 Parent-Teacher nights.
  10. the principal and/or the associate director have been available for individual meetings with parents
  11. we produced detailed progress reports with grade breakdowns, individual faculty narratives and advisors comments – to provide parents and students with the information they need to assist us in maximizing student learning.

 

Together, the CSS-MSE approach outlined above represents a significant departure from what is the norm in public schools. DOE sets aside one day, and one day only, for Parent Teacher conferences. This PT day disrupts at least half a day of instruction – and parents only have 3-4 hours to see faculty. CSS is providing 4 days--a total of 15 hours--without impacting instruction, and also making additional accommodations for special circumstances (e.g. working parents, etc).

Our administrators are available as well. We make individual appointments and we do our best to stagger them so parents can see teachers one after the other. However, it is impossible to schedule all parents even in this greatly extended conference schedule.

Admittedly there were problems with our phone messaging systems – and we apologize for that. The phone messaging system has now been corrected and streamlined. We apologize to those of you who left messages and were not returned. Whenever this happens again please call me directly.

We are partners in this adventure of building CSS-MSE, so please continue to send us your suggestions and feedback.
 
Sincerely,

Dr. Jose Gabriel Maldonado-Rivera, Principal