Boston Courant: Parents Get High Marks at Hurley
The Boston Courant
June 17th, 2006
by Thomas Grillo
At some schools, parents are relegated to bakes sales and chaperoning field trips, but at the Hurley Elementary School they are helping to transform an aging schoolhouse into a state-of-the-art facility.
Thanks to a group of parents, the students of the kindergarten through fifth grade school will walk into a library for the first time next fall. Parents spruced up a former classroom and converted the space into a haven for books and reading.
In addition to pointing the walls, moms and dads convinced Ikea Furniture to equip the library with $10,000 in tables, chairs and bookcases, got Verizon to donate personal computers and received a grant for books from the Laura Bush Foundation.
"Our goal is to make Hurley the kind of school we'd want our kids to attend," said Electa Sevier, president of the Neighborhood Parents for the Hurley School. "An amazing group of parents have succeeded in bringing programs and capital improvements."
In the three years since its founding, parents have been instrumental in attracting resources to a school that badly needed them.
The accomplishments include the renovation of the gym and installation of new lockers thanks, in part, to City Councilor James Kelly, who sought the funding in the city's budget. Parents are already at work with their next project: restoring the auditorium.
"We met with teachers and asked them what was missing," said Sevier. "They said the number one thing was music so we pushed to make it happen."
In response, parents raised money and secured Urban Voices, a choral music program through the Metropolitan Opera Guild. Children participate in a music project with weekly sessions that culminates in performances. Parents also received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to launch a dance program and made trips to the Science museum a routine event.
Beth Schmieta volunteers in her daughter Luise's first grade class one morning a week in the Spanish and English immersion school.
"I feel totally welcome," she said. "I work with small groups during reading time or just help a child one-on-one with spelling as students write and illustrate their own stories. I help if they get stuck and keep them moving along."
Schmieta also serves on the School Site Council, a group of parents, teachers and administrators who meet monthly. The panel has been working to create a school mission statement and revise the handbook.
Neighborhood Parents was launched by parents seeking to advance public school education and wanted an alternative to the Quincy, the popular Chinatown school. In 2003, Anne Kirby Alvarez, a South End mother of two young children, toured the Hurley and met Richard Hall, the school's parent liaison.
Soon after their meeting, Alvarez established a database of potential kindergarten classes, distributed e-mails, organized a discussion about the school and introduced parents to one another. At subsequent information sessions, more parents became enthusiastic about the Hurley and got involved in the growing organization.
The goal of Neighborhood Parents is to build on the Hurley's strong points, publicize the school, increase local enrollment, enhance the school's curriculum, upgrade its facilities, build corporate and university partnerships, find donors for needed supplies and equipment and attract volunteers.
"We make people realize that there are lots of great public schools in Boston and parents needed another option other than private school or moving to the suburbs," Sevier said.
"This year has been exciting with a new principal [Marjorie Soto] who is setting the world on fire and we partnered with her. Before this we were feeling our way blindly."