Latino Parent Awareness Campaign.

The state of education in California is at a critical stage. State lawmakers passed a series of reforms designed to strengthen the educational requirements of students and accountability of schools.

A press conference announcing the Latino Parent Awareness Campaign initiative will be held on Monday, August 25th at Sierra Park Elementary School. Guest speakers at the conference include: Jack O’Connell, Superintendent of Public Instruction, California Department of Education; Roy Romer, Superintendent of LAUSD; Darline P. Robles, Superintendent of Schools, Los Angeles County; Maria A. Casillas, President of Families in Schools; Antonio Villaraigosa, L.A. City Council member and Monica Lozano, President of La Opinion. The press conference will begin at 10 am at the Sierra Park Elementary School, located at 3170 Budau Avenue in Los Angeles.

The speakers will address the effects of the new educational mandates on Latino families, which include the adoption of new content standards, a statewide performance measure known as the Academic Performance Index (API) and incentives for improved performance and interventions for low achievements.

The county of Los Angeles, with over 1.6 million students attending grades K through 12, feels the affects of these changes more than any other school district statewide. Forty percent of students in the county are Hispanic and over half a million speak Spanish at home. The L.A. Unified School District, which has the second largest enrollment in the nation with 710,000 students in K through 12, faces the challenge of reaching and communicating these new mandates to all of the parents of these children.

To disseminate these changes, in particular to parents who speak Spanish, the Latino Parent Awareness Campaign, a multi-tiered program has been established to present invaluable information, tools and resources to Hispanic parents.

The Latino Parent Awareness Campaign has designed a special 16-page magazine, written and produced by La Opinion, on the upcoming changes. It was prepared with the key support of leading educators in the state. The LAUSD and the L.A. County Department of Education will be distributing 1 million copies of the Latino Parent Awareness Campaign magazine, Padres En La Escuela/Parents In the Schools, to every school located within the county.

The magazine will also be available in La Opinion on Tuesday, August 26th. “I’m very pleased to be part of the launch of the Latino Parent Awareness Campaign. Parents play a crucial role in ensuring their children succeed in school,” said Jack O’Connell, Superintendent of Public Instruction, California Department of Education. “This new program, Parents in the Schools, is designed to reach out to Latino parents and inform them about California’s new accountability system and what it means to them.”

“Parent involvement is crucial for the success of all students,” states Roy Romer, Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “This District is making it a priority to welcome parents to schools and to help them understand what their students are learning and how they can help. I welcome La Opinion’s commitment to reaching parents with this educational supplement.”

“This publication is a great idea and very valuable. I applaud La Opinion for taking a bold step and getting out this important school information to our Spanish-speaking parents,” said Darline P. Robles, Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools. “We share with La Opinion the belief that this will help parents become more deeply involved in their children’s education.”

This special educational guide will also be accessible online at http://www.laopinion.com/educacion