http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/nyregion/parent-coordinator-new-york-city-public-schools.html 2016-09-08 04:41:19 The Title: Parent Coordinator. The Job: Whatever Needs to Be Done From checking for lice to reassuring anxious families, the roles of parent coordinators are as varied as the New York City public schools they serve. === Event planners. Choreographers. Designated hand-holders. Fonts of information. Lice-checkers in chief. These are among the many roles parent coordinators play in New York City’s public schools, and as the city’s 1.1 million schoolchildren return to class on Thursday, their busy season is about to begin. “The kids are excited,” Caren Austen, the parent coordinator at The job of the parent coordinator was introduced by the Bloomberg administration A parent coordinator serves as the school’s point person for students’ families, but beyond that, the position is loosely defined. Given the vastness and variance of the city’s school system, this means the job could look completely different from one school to the next, a revealing measure of the needs of the parents — and how accustomed they are to having those needs met. In one school, the parent coordinator might help families figure out how to apply for food stamps or translate for parents who do not speak English. In another, they manage droves of parental demands and try to keep the peace in times of stress. “I can’t tell you how many times my phone rings and they’re crying, or they walk into my office and they start crying — the parents,” Ms. Austen said of high school application season. “I just try to keep as much humor in it as possible.” At “My role is to help the parents be as informed as possible so they can feel safe and reassured, or know how to follow up with their children,” Ms. Clemente said. “They may not be involved, but as long as they’re informed, they can be effective.” In some schools, the parent coordinator is just another adult in the building — a de facto secretary with a small footprint. But there also are schools where it seems as if the doors would not open in the morning without the parent coordinator. For parents, this could seem especially true at large schools where the principal is spread among many hundreds, even thousands, of students and families. Ardith Holmgrain said that at her daughter’s middle school in Midtown Manhattan, the parent coordinator was a “golden key to many doors,” “a true professional” and “the lice maven.” An active scalp checker in the hallways, Ms. Holmgrain said, the coordinator was the one “to go to to see if kids had it.” While technically their scheduled hours are about seven a day, many coordinators who play an outsize role in their school end up working similarly prodigious hours, with work days frequently stretching into evenings and weekends. Among them is Karla Fittipaldi, the parent coordinator at the “I was raised on a poultry farm, so I have a good work ethic,” she said. “Sometimes the kids might complain to me, ‘Oh, I had to clean my room,’ and I say, ‘Well, I had to do that — and shovel manure out of the coop. I think they feel they’re not getting quite enough sympathy.” One factor that tends to be the same among most parent coordinators is that a vast majority are women. As of June, men accounted for only 173 of the 1,483 parent coordinators in the city. Tom Hepworth, the parent coordinator at “We probably have more men involved at our school than most others, because I kind of set the tone, ‘It’s O.K. to be here, guys,’” Mr. Hepworth said. “You’ve got to be secure in your masculinity to do this, but it’s a good thing.”