Small School, Powerhouse Parent Group

The parent group at the Sacred Heart School in Fremont, Ohio, calls itself PATHS (Parents and Teachers Helping Students). While that name is a great indicator of the cooperative spirit that benefits children, it doesn’t reveal what a powerhouse exists in this small school. Perhaps a better moniker might be The Mouse That Roared or The Little Engine That Could. With only 305 students spread among grades K-8, you might expect PATHS to set modest goals. On the contrary, the team at Sacred Heart has a way of aiming high and then dazzling everyone, from national corporations to fundraising representatives to the staff at PTO Today.

The best example of this is an ambitious enrichment program called CLC (Character education, Life skills development, and Career exploration opportunities), initially funded by a grant from Whirlpool Corp. and since then supported primarily by PATHS. The cost is $2,400 a year for supplies and stipends to instructors. This program for seventh and eighth graders has multiple goals: to offer the students additional course options, help them have positive interactions with each other as well as with adults, involve them in the community, and help them develop avocations and interests as a positive alternative to the temptations of gangs and drug and alcohol abuse.

These minicourses, offered at no cost to the students, meet four times each quarter, either during or after school. They address a wide array of topics, such as woodworking, art, local history, genealogy, foreign languages, computers, basketball, and strength training. Students with an interest in writing produce a newsletter. Those with a more dramatic bent perform two plays each year. Some gather to discuss issues like gangs and sexual harassment.

Parents teach the courses or give presentations as part of a class. For example, several parents shared their knowledge of Korea, Mexico, and Ireland for a class on world cultures. Other parents make costumes or props for the drama productions. Some share knowledge of hobbies, such as cooking, macrame, and origami, or professional experiences, as when parents who work at a credit union discussed personal finance.

Another parent teaches Red Cross-certification-level first aid. And the learning sometimes extends beyond the classroom into service to the school and community. Students worked under the direction of a local artist to paint a mural on one of the school stairwells, while those studying quiltmaking donated their creations to area agencies.

Students rave about these classes with enthusiasm usually reserved for the latest video game. One student wrote, “Out of all the CLC classes I have taken—Spanish, sewing, Latin, crocheting, knitting, crafts, and pencil-drawing—my favorite was sewing. This is because before the class I was scared to even use a sewing machine. Now I love to sew just for fun.”

Others describe the thrill of helping create a school website and the fun of learning to ice skate and golf and take photographs and decorate crafts for Easter. Perhaps the most enthusiastic participants were the students who took a class called Wild Blue, an introduction to piloting airplanes. Calling themselves the Wild Blue Wonders, they entered an online contest—and won a free trip for themselves, their families, and their instructor to a national aviation competition in Oshkosh, Wis., with transportation, board, and entrance fees paid by Ford Motor Co.

The parents involved in the program share their children’s excitement, noting how students become more self-assured and how school looks different to them. “Students gain poise and self-confidence through the successes they experience in the different classes,” wrote PATHS members in their Parent Group of the Year entry. “They develop interests and hobbies where once they may have perceived only negative options.”

Sacred Heart’s parent group has also gained attention as a fundraiser extraordinaire, helping the private Catholic school keep down tuition costs. PATHS limits itself to three major fundraisers a year to invest maximum energy into those activities and help keep parents from feeling overburdened. “We tried having a lot of the little stuff, but parents get tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death,” says group Secretary Kathy Chudzinski. “We tried the cookie dough and couldn’t believe how that took off. We just make it bigger and better every year.”

Sacred Heart raised a phenomenal $20,000 selling Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough, making it the No. 2 seller of this product nationwide, beaten only by a school more than three times its size. This performance by such a small school so stunned the company’s distribution manager that he wrote a letter of congratulations, calling the group’s sales level “a true business phenomenon” because “there is not another school that even came close to the amount of sales per enrollment” recorded by Sacred Heart.

The keys to their success, Chudzinski says, are that they found a product not previously sold in their area, they chose a product families love, they limit selling time to two weeks in September, and parents help spread the word by calling other parents they know to get them to participate. “Once you talk to one person, he or she says ‘I’m pretty sure my friend will help,’ and the phone calls continue,” says Principal Cynthia Fought.

The two other annual fundraisers are Vegas Night, which last year raised $15,000, and gift-card sales, which netted $6,700. On Vegas Night, attended by hundreds of adults from the school and parish community, individuals pay $10 for admission to a night of games, food, and drinks. Most of the money is raised by a silent auction and raffle, all with donated items. The gift cards to area restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, and clothing stores are sold throughout the year, with an extended list of businesses that participate at Christmastime; sales get a boost from parents who run tables after church. The school receives a percentage whenever the cards are used.

From the rookie teacher whose commitment to her new school has been deepened by the devotion she sees among her students’ parents to the veteran parish priest who calls PATHS “a wonderful organization of dedicated parents...like no other I have experienced,” those who watch this parent group in action have no doubts about how far this “little engine” can go.

Group at a Glance

Name: Sacred Heart PATHS (Parents and Teachers Helping Students)
Location: Fremont, Ohio
Community: population 17,375; rural/suburban
School Size: 305 students, grades K-8
Annual Budget: $49,000
Typical Meeting Attendance: 6-15