By EMELY MIRANDA-AGUILAR
PHOTO CREDIT Giuseppe LoPiccolo
Parents of College Park students who attend Parkdale High School said they would like to start a school-sanctioned PTA but their efforts have been thwarted by a lack of cooperation from school officials.
In addition, some parents said their efforts to volunteer to help with fundraising and other activities have not been welcome.
As a result, a group of parents and community members connected with Free State PTA, an organization that helps form parent-teacher organizations, and started their own, which the school reportedly does not recognize.
“It’s frustrating because we know there are good students,” Victoria-María MacDonald, a College Park resident, said. “There’s great teachers and staff at Parkdale, and it just doesn’t make sense, you know? Why don’t you want to collaborate with parents who are trying to start something?”
The high school has an informal parent group, led by Principal Tasha Graves, who reportedly is not in favor of an official PTA led by parents.
Colleen Cooke, a College Park resident whose daughter will attend Parkdale in a few years, said the school used to have a PTA, run by Pastor Michael S. Dickson II, but it went defunct in 2020.
In early 2023, Cooke said, she tried to connect with Parkdale faculty to become more involved with the school after she saw a post on Nextdoor, a social networking service for neighborhoods, made by a student about missing doors on bathroom stalls in at least one of the boy’s bathrooms.
“Thus began a year-long process trying to get connected with anyone and everyone who could help me get involved,” Cooke said. “This may have seemed excessive or aggressive, but it just got increasingly bizarre how difficult it was to get involved.”
Along the way, Cooke connected with other students, parents and community members who were concerned about the school. She also joined a Facebook group called Citizens for Accountability in Governance, which advised her to get involved with the school’s PTA–but Parkdale did not have one.
Cooke, with support from community members, including Richard Potts III, a former Parkdale student, was already working to create a PTA.
“The sense of community in the school is very robust,” Potts said. “There’s a good community in terms of, like, students and teachers. In terms of faculty and administration, I would say there’s a disconnect between students and faculty, and in terms of parents and faculty, there’s a lack of communication.”
Potts also said that, though the school has an informal parent group, no good line of communication exists between the school and parents. Other community members and parents said they had struggled to connect with the school when they offered to get involved or volunteer.
After a year of trying to connect with the school, Cooke and a group of parents and community members, including MacDonald, obtained a charter via Free State PTA. By spring 2024, they established a PTA without the school’s support.
Still, in April 2024 the school applied for a $500 grant from College Park to fund “parent activities, events and workshops.” However, the city declined the application after determining no active PTA existed at the school.
The community group continued its efforts to connect with the school before the start of the 2024-2025 school year, offering to volunteer for back-to-school night or assist teachers with classroom setup. However, members reported receiving either no response or dismissive replies, MacDonald said.
“My biggest concern is the lack of responsiveness and even hostility that I, and others who want to help, have been treated with,” Cooke said. “It should not be this difficult.”
Prince George’s County Board of Education Vice Chair Jonathan Briggs (District 2), said he intervened with the school on behalf of the community group. He told College Park Here & Now that Graves claimed there wasn’t much interest from parents in getting involved with the school or starting a PTA.
Graves declined a request for an interview for this article.
Other parents have complained about the lack of opportunities to get involved with their kids’ school.
“When parents are saying, ‘Hey, we want to come in and help where we can,’ and we’re getting a door closed in our face, that’s confusing to me. That doesn’t make sense,” Nicola Netto-White, a Parkdale parent, said. “We’re part of the community. We’re invested. We want the best for our kids. We want the best for Parkdale.”
One parent from a group of Spanish-speaking parents interested in becoming involved with the school said that during the principal’s parent group meetings, she could not voice her concerns about school safety and bathroom policies. She and Netto-White said the meetings had a set agenda with no room for parents and administrators to collaborate on topics.
Some of the parents contacted College Park City Councilmember Jacob Hernandez (District 1).
Hernandez told College Park Here & Now he also experienced difficulties connecting with the school.
“I think Parkdale has an opportunity here by increasing their accessibility, not only to their own student body and to municipal leaders, but to their parents,” Hernandez said. “I recommend there be some sort of liaison for us to be able to build a closer community through strategic partnership opportunities.”
He added: “Parkdale High School has the awesome responsibility, an incredible responsibility, to not only facilitate the graduation of their student body but also to serve as a civic partner and leader to their students,” Hernandez said. “I believe that if we do not address the unwieldy obstacles that exist in our public school system, we will always continue to have challenges across the county.”
