This year, Parents for Public Schools (PPS) had their annual meeting at Moscone Elementary School, 2876 Harrison.

Moscone Elementary School has the highest API scores of Latino students in the District. In attendance were School Board Commissioner Mark Sanchez, Eric Mar, Hydra Mendoza (former executive director for PPS) and Jill Wynns.

At this year’s meeting, the audience was more diverse-with Latino, Asian-American and African-American parents as part of the mix. Several translators were on hand to provide translation to parents in Chinese and Spanish. PPS noted that they have an active Latino parents group that sponsored an event that drew 300 parents. (Well done, Daisy!) PPS is also creating a Chinese American parents group. (Great idea, Lorraine!)

PPS had a film crew from Balboa High School (and all were formerly from Aptos MS) inviewing parents on “Why I Love My Public School.” CBOs such as Healthy Children, Chinese for Affirmative Action and SF Public Library had tables.

The day started out with an exercise of the audience what they want in a public school in small groups. The groups listed diversity, sports, art, music, safety, well paid and tenured teachers, after school programs, organic meals, engaged teachers, strong prncipals, physical education, strong parent participation, translation at the school and great libraries.

Parents who spoke were from a diversity of schools-McKinley ES, Leonard Flynn ES, Lilienthal ES, Thurgood Marshall ES, Mission HS, John O’Connell ES, Aptos MS, Giannini MS and other schools.

Lorraine Woodruff-Long, executive director, also announced that PPS was able to increase enrollment at various schools in the triple- and double-digits. The following schools had growth in their enrollment figures for the 07-08 school year:

Dianne Feinstein ES (Sunset)-229%
Peabody ES (Inner Richmond)-88%
Leonard Flynn ES (Mission)-78%
New Traditions ES (Outer Haight)-61%
Sunset ES-50%
Lafayette ES (Outer Richmond)-43%
Marshall ES (Inner Mission)-34%
Sherman ES (Pacific Heights)-33%
Grattan ES (Cole Valley)-32%
Miraloma ES-32%

The next portion of the annual meeting presented the findings of the focus groups that San Francisco Education Fund, the SF Parents Advisory Council and PPS did on “Student Enrollment, Recruitment and Retention: Tapping into the Community Voice.”

A delicious lunch was served. PPS used the lunch to give parents a chance to Commissioners Wynns, Mendoza, Sanchez and Mar one-on-one.

Well done, PPS!