[music]
Mariah: Our group is going to be working with Glenn Elementary School.
Right now they have a PTA,
but it's pretty small, it's pretty inactive.
And they're attempting to grow it.
So they're using our data to see what would work best.
Some strategies that would work best for the parents.
Tamara: Honestly, we stumbled across the PTA.
We have two kindergarteners.
And we said, hey, it's good to be a part of the PTA,
know what's going on at the school.
And then we started to see some of the barriers at Glenn.
Parent-teacher relationship was very weak.
When the child did have a problem,
that parent would try to talk to a teacher, or if a teacher had
a problem, that teacher would try to talk to the parent.
And there was just miscommunication.
That made it difficult for them to figure out what the child actually needed.
And being a predominantly black school, and brown school,
it just made the self-esteem even lower.
Because then parents felt like "Oh, well, they don't really care about me."
Because then they have to wonder, is it because of the color of my skin?
Is it because I'm Latino? Is it because I'm black?
David: You mess with the lion...
Reporter: Parents and teachers with signs in hand reading,
"Keep our school public."
Crowding outside Glenn Elementary.
This is one of four schools now being considered for the state's new Innovative School District.
Tamara: That really solidified our role in the PTA.
Like, "No, we need to stay on and build a PTA here at Glenn,
because there's really no one here to advocate for these children in a real organic way."
Aaron: They were able to organize a protest when there was a takeover for Glenn School.
That was initiated from charter schools that were trying to take ahold of Glenn
because of low scores and low performance.
The Glenn map is so huge. It reaches all the way from northeast Durham
all the way close to downtown.
And so, some parents have to travel a lot more than others.
Which would actually be impetus for me not to attend PTA meetings.
Nick: We've been doing a little bit of research, and also
thinking of how we can build tools for them.
So that later on, they can have data that they've collected, and they can analyze that data.
Aaron: The system that we created will actually create a bubble map.
And it will categorize them, kind of like a social mapping.
Oh, this parent is great at outreach. This person is great at communicating ideas,
and coming up with new strategies.
And so that social map, from the surveys that we'll do, will actually give the PTA presidents
a category for all of that.
Peyton: We all went to public schools, so working for a public school
has been really fun, and something that we all like doing.
We also all want to be teachers, so we have a lot of common goals.
Tamara: From my experience of talking to Duke students,
it can be insular sometimes, and they forget about the community around them.
So I'm hoping that this will cause them to be more socially aware.
I'm hoping that the relationship will be strengthened that way.
Versus just numbers.
Calculating numbers, percentages and everything.
But actually being able to see the people behind it.
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