It’s not often that Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board meetings draw large crowds. But 25 parents who want to have a say in their children’s education are changing that.

“It’s time for the schools to hear our voice,” said Betsy Jenkins, interim program coordinator at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, which organizes the new parent training program.

About 28 parents are involved in the Parent Advocacy Training Program, which aims to provide a network of parental support for children enrolled at District 65 schools. The parents meet at Fleetwood-Jourdain, 1655 Foster St., on the first Friday of each month to discuss how they can improve their children’s education.

“The main goal of the program was to bring parents together and to address their common recreational and educational needs,” Jenkins said.

The program was established to aid parents in instituting changes at the center.

“When we started talking, the parents expressed that they were concerned about homework, school behavior policy and their perception of what the school sees them as,” Jenkins said.

Fleetwood-Jourdain later invited Brenda Dunbar, a teacher at Nichols Middle School, to assist parents in sharing their concerns.

“Ms. Dunbar was interested in coming in and talking to parents about what they should look for at report card period … and where the child should be at the particular grade level,” Jenkins said.

Some parents at the May 9 meeting asked for more black male teachers to serve as positive role models for young children. They were concerned with the large numbers of black male students in behavioral disorder classes and the overwhelming volume of homework given to their children.

One of the main issues that concern parents is the relationship between parents and teachers.

“The teachers and administrators do not know us well enough,” parent Carolyn Wharton at the meeting said.

Because many black families are single-parent families and some parents hold more than one job to make ends meet, “most of us do not have the luxury of attending meetings,” Wharton said.

This problem is further complicated because many school meetings are held in the mornings or afternoons, when most parents involved in the Parent Advocacy Training Program are at work, she said.

“Do not ignore us when we cannot participate,” Wharton said. “We do not want to walk in and have everyone look at us and say, ‘Why are they here? What do they want?'”

A major issue concerning parents is the busing system that integrates schools according to a guideline requiring no school to be made up of more than 60 percent of one racial group. Students in the predominantly black Fifth Ward are transported from their homes to schools around Evanston.

The “60/40” guideline creates many problems for the children, parents said. The children often are forced to wake up earlier than other children and wait on street corners in the cold winter for late buses. They cross streets without crossing guards and stand on street corners alone.

“This is an unsafe situation for our children,” parent Tammy Seals said.

The disadvantages of the busing system impact the achievement gap between white and minority students, many parents said

The concerns of the parents have prompted the District 65 school board to re-examine the guideline.

District 65 Superintendent Hardy Ray Murphy also visited Fleetwood-Jourdain last month and held a discussion with the parents about their concerns, Jenkins said.

“The parents feel that they have made some inroads, but they are going to continue to get involved,” she said.