The Detroit school district is considering recognizing parent organizations that operate independently from the state and national Parent Teacher Association.

, introduced by the Detroit Public Schools Community District during a Feb. 26 board committee meeting, came after members expressed frustrations over reported dysfunction and conflict within some local PTAs last year. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said during a June board meeting some PTAs have had challenges with “proper implementation of elections” and “following protocols.”

Board Member Monique Bryant told Chalkbeat this week the proposed policy would create better balance by allowing parents to choose what works best for their individual schools.

Some school communities may not have parents with the time or bandwidth to formally organize and run PTAs, she said. A better option for some parents may be to join an organization overseen by the district’s Family and Community Engagement Department, or FACE.

The proposed policy amendment could mean that formal parent engagement ends up looking different from school to school. It would recognize independent, locally organized parent-teacher organizations, as well as other parent organization models approved by FACE. The proposal would also clarify the voting model all organizations must rely on: Each year, every school would vote on the type of parent organization model it wants to use and submit results to district administrators.

The proposed amendment follows incidents of mismanagement by two parent-teacher organizations reported by the district’s Office of Inspector General over the last seven years.

The National PTA is a nationwide volunteer-led organization with state and local chapters, which organize to fundraise, plan educational events, and advocate for students’ needs. PTAs are self-governed, separate entities from local school districts.

DPSCD’s current policy only recognizes the PTA as its “official parent organization of record” for its schools. There are multiple that oversee school-based chapters in the district.

The board has not yet voted on the proposed changes.

Tonya Whitehead, president of the Michigan PTA, and leaders of several Detroit PTA councils did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But Whitehead said during public comment at a July committee meeting that state and Detroit PTA leadership provided support and additional training to local chapters to address the issues raised by the board and Vitti.

“We are committed to continual improvement within our organizations, including streamlining processes to improve response time, providing additional training to members and PTA leaders at all member levels, and working together with the FACE office to improve two-way communication and behavior problem solving,” she said at the time.

Board members did not discuss the policy when the district introduced the proposal at the February committee meeting. However, members called for change at multiple meetings last year.

Bryant said she complained last year about the handling of a PTA election at Cass Technical High School. Bryant, who is a Cass Tech parent and was a member of the PTA, said the organization did not follow its bylaws when it took nominations for new leadership. The result was that PTA’s entire executive board was reelected before their terms were up, said Bryant.

The Cass Tech PTSA — which also includes students — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bryant added she contacted the Michigan PTA with concerns, but the organization was unresponsive.

“I don’t think we should be moving forward with individual schools still trying to have elections after this,” she said during the June meeting.

Detroit brought back PTAs to ‘heal the divide’

When the state appointed an emergency manager to take control of Detroit Public Schools in 2009, PTAs were removed. That emergency management ended in 2016, and PTAs returned to district schools after Vitti began as superintendent in May 2017.

“We set out to try to heal the divide that was between the community and schools – one of the ways that the board and I thought best to do that [was] bring back the PTA,” said Vitti at the July committee meeting.

Whitehead said during public comment of that meeting that DPSCD staff “were closely integrated in trying to start units in every school in the district” when emergency management ended.

She said their efforts “included collecting dues and being listed as the contractor for PTAs in district documents,” which resulted in “incomplete paperwork” and made it appear that PTA concerns should be directed to district staff.

“Post-pandemic, PTA, in cooperation with the FACE office, has been working hard to end those practices and ensure that adults engaged with PTA and the district know the difference between the roles and responsibilities of each,” she added. “But there is more work to be done.”

Vitti said it is challenging for the PTA “to monitor elections, ensure the training and capacity of officers once they’re elected, and problem-solve through conflict between officers at certain schools.”

Conflict over policy arose at PTAs beyond Cass Technical last year, Bryant said. For example, PTA members at two schools complained it was unfair that school staff who were also parents of students at their school could become executive officers of their PTA, she said. Bryant did not identify the two schools.

Mismanagement of parent organization funds were found in previous years by the Office of Inspector General, or OIG, which serves as an independent oversight office for the district.

In 2019, the OIG received complaints the PTA committee of a district school mismanaged fundraising proceeds. Because the PTA did not properly document the amount of funds raised, the could not determine how much money was reportedly missing.

The district mandated cash management training for all PTA officers and fundraising organizers as a result of the OIG’s recommendations stemming from its investigation. Detroit schools also began requiring PTAs to submit financial statements after every school-based fundraising event.

, the OIG found that a parent organization improperly retained funds for a school field trip, and also reported a lack of district oversight of support organizations. The OIG recommended the parent group pay an outstanding bill of more than $7,200. The OIG also recommended better collaboration between district offices to improve donation tracking, as well as internal controls for parent support organizations.

However, board members did not mention those two incidents when they shared concerns about PTAs, and Vitti did not address them. It is unclear whether they contributed to the district’s decision to introduce the proposal in February to change how parent organizations work.

“I think the issue has been the PTA has not been able to demonstrate the capacity … to work within the district at the scale that we operate at, because we’re so much larger,” said Vitti in July.

Vitti said the PTA needed to expedite its response to issues at individual schools and improve its communication with the board.

Some board members raised the option of letting individual schools decide whether to continue their PTAs or start new organizations, a choice that’s included in the new policy proposal.

“Instead of creating a one size fits all approach … we might be looking at individual schools that seem to have repeated problems, which is high level conflict, move away from that and run it at the district level in order to create better balance,” said Vitti.

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The public will vote on the issue , though the effort is now largely symbolic: The school board, facing consistent pressure to reinstate the course, . 

“After 10 years of damage, the district did the right thing,” said Rex Ridgeway, who, along with several others, on the matter last year, casting doubt on the by removing the course from middle school. 

San Francisco is just one of many school systems nationwide that has grappled with when to offer algebra in a battle that has pitted equity against rigor. An earlier survey by ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ of the country’s largest school districts showed varied participation rates in the course at the middle school level with white and wealthier students often having greater access.  

Some education experts called algebra an unnecessary barrier to student success while others were trying to increase the number of children who can take it.

Dallas made advanced coursework at the middle school level, including mathematics, opt-out rather than opt-in, dramatically increasing participation rates among traditionally marginalized students — without seeing a drop in scores. , which nixed middle school algebra years ago, recently reversed itself after parents . 

While some groups, including the , praised San Francisco for its earlier decision to remove the course, parents quickly mobilized against it. They feared the plan would hinder students’ ability to take calculus in 12th grade. The impact, they reasoned, could follow them to college, jeopardizing their chance to enter lucrative STEM fields. 

Ridgeway, a retired stockbroker, tutored his granddaughter, Joselyn Marroquin, from first to ninth grade, plugging in what he described as gaping holes in math, English and science instruction. 

“Immediately, I saw she was not getting the type of education I would expect,” he said.  

Ridgeway paid $860 for Marroquin, now 16, to take an online algebra course the summer before her freshman year of high school so she could sail through the class in 9th grade — and double up on another course, geometry. 

But it was a challenge. 

“It was a little difficult because it was online,” Marroquin told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “I think I learn best in person.”

She said the course succeeded in preparing her for high school math, but that the time commitment ate into her other plans.  

“Although classes were in the morning, I had to complete homework and study for the next lesson,” she said. “Because of that, it was difficult to do other activities I enjoyed. I didn’t really have a summer vacation.”  

SFUSD moved to its current model to address the fact that few students were successfully progressing through its math sequence at the time: Just 19% of tenth graders — and only 1% percent of Black children — had passed the state math assessment and had not repeated math coursework across the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years. 

Those pushing for the change also noted a lack of participation in advanced math courses among Black and Hispanic students.  

But a 2023 found “large ethnoracial gaps in (Advanced Placement) math course-taking did not decrease after the policy change.” Specifically, the percentage of Black students enrolling in any AP math course in high school remained the same while Hispanic student participation increased by just 1 percentage point.

Meredith Dodson, executive director of SF Parents, understands the school district’s rationale for eliminating the course, but has long disagreed with the move.

“I think their experiment 10 years ago to delay algebra was well-intentioned, but in the end it had the opposite of the intended effect,” she said. “Kids who were supposed to be helped by that policy change were ultimately further harmed.”

Dodson said the disparity is stark.

“Parents around San Francisco are shocked when they hear algebra isn’t offered in middle school currently,” she said. “It’s time to bring it back, and we’re just glad that the district isn’t ignoring the data any longer.”

California public schools, like those in many other states, have to private schools and homeschooling post-pandemic. SFUSD’s student population alone shrank from to . District leaders just announced they will because of the loss. 

The district’s reversal on algebra comes two years after three school board members were in a February 2022 referendum. The vote reflected the public’s enormous dissatisfaction with . 

Algebra will be piloted in in the district next fall. It will also offer an online Algebra 1 course next school year and a summer course in 2025. 

Patrick Wolff, cofounder of Families for San Francisco, served as the group’s executive director before the organization was absorbed into TogetherSF. Wolff, who had children in the district from 2010 to 2022, said its problems extended well beyond a single course.  

“SFUSD has done a terrible job of teaching kids math,” he said. “Kids who are capable of learning more math have been held back for no good reason and kids who need more support in order to reach their full potential have absolutely been failed in receiving the support and instruction they need.”

Wolff said there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that some students might excel in advanced mathematics at a younger age while others will not — as long as those who struggle are helped to improve. 

Melodie Baker, national policy director at , an organization that promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success, said the district can’t simply return to an earlier, failed approach. 

“So the prior tracking policy didn’t lead to equitable outcomes,” she said. “Detracking didn’t lead to equitable outcomes either. So it makes sense that they’re not sticking with it, but they’ll need to find new ways to implement eighth-grade algebra that ensure better outcomes for Black and Latinx students. Not just revert to what they were doing before.”

A released last month noted just 65% of U.S. principals said their elementary or middle school offered algebra in eighth grade — but only for some students. Twenty percent of respondents said it was open to all. 

Eighth-grade algebra was even scarcer in California: only 48% of principals said their school offered the course, and only to certain children. Eighteen percent said any child could enroll.