Superintendent announces 48 members of NC schools parent advisory commission

State Superintendent Catherine Truitt has assembled the members of her new Parent Advisory Commission.

The commission is 48 members and will hold its first meeting sometime in September.

The commission will meet quarterly and make suggestions to Truitt, who will relay those suggestions to the State Board of Education and others as she sees fit.

The commission isn’t the only one reporting to Truitt — teachers have an advisory council, as well — but Truitt said she wanted to form this commission to increase parent engagement in schools.

Critics argued the commission was lopsided toward parents of students not enrolled in traditional public schools.

While traditional public school students comprise about 1.4 million of the state’s 1.8 million schoolchildren, their parents can only account for 16 to 24 of the 48 board seats — or a third to half of seats, compared to their more than three-quarters representation as students.

Truitt’s picks — selected with the help of advisers at the state Department of Public Instruction — gave traditional public school parents 24 seats on the board. They received all eight of the spots reserved for parents of public school students in the biggest county in each of the state’s eight education regions. Public charter schools parents could have gotten one of those seats, too.

Charter school parents, private school parents and home school parents have eight board seats each.

The Department of Public Instruction, which Truitt heads as the Superintendent of Public Instruction, does not oversee home schools or private schools. The state’s Department of Administration’s Division of Nonpublic Education does. Public and nonpublic schools can interact if a students seeks education in one and services in another.

Most of the 3,500 applications to be on the board were thrown out earlier this spring because they left at least one item on the questionnaire blank. After that, in early April, 693 applications remained. A committee whittled them down to 150, and Truitt worked with the committee on selecting the final 48 members.

The commission’s formation coincides with a rise in parents publicly protesting that schools aren’t listening to them, since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

At the same time, national polls show parents are largely satisfied with their individual child’s school.