Education advocates have long warned that the diminishing role for parents in schools will eventually kill off parent involvement altogether.
Now, the city's own findings on the efficacy of two avenues available for parents to weigh in on their childrens' schools back up Mayor Bloomberg's critics.
Out of 100 schools, 78% of parent coordinators - the on-staff liaisons between parents and the school - could not be reached on their city-provided cell phones, according to a survey by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.
And the Department of Education's own parent engagement office found that only 51% of the schools it has looked at so far has a functioning School Leadership Team (SLT).
The news may be no surprise to parents, who have bemoaned many of the administration's reforms - including disbanding local school boards.
But for educators, whose jobs are to engage parents, recent tallies are worrisome.
"It's really embarrassing to say our district's Presidents Council is not even in effect right now," Michelle Lloyd-Bey, the community superintendent of Queens District 27, said at a community meeting in March. A Presidents Council represents all the PTAs in a district.
She added that SLTs - a body of teachers and parents that help in school decision-making - "are not sending documentation as they're supposed to, not keeping records, and in some cases they're not even functioning."
Martine Guerrier, the city's chief of parent engagement, said her office is working to fix the problems. "SLTs have always been an issue," she said. Her office began looking into SLTs recently and found that many only existed on paper. But in district surveys, 83% of schools claimed they had SLTs.
Guerrier's office was created last year to address some of these complaints. "We just started, so there's no way to tell right now, but I'm encouraged by what I've seen," she said of the city's progress.
But William McDonald, a parent in Queens District 29 who also heads the citywide Chancellor's Parent Advisory Committee, said the effect of Bloomberg's initiatives on parent involvement has been "a mess."
"It's to the point now where SLTs don't function at all," he said, noting the problem began in 2003 when the city eliminated SLT budgets. The city instead hired "SLT coordinators" - a job that was dissolved last year.
And with the PTAs also disappearing or growing less active, McDonald sees a dim future.
"As I see it, in three years, parent involvement probably won't even exist," he said.
