03/17/99 - Temecula, CA

Who is the dreaded Lynn Schoeffler who has been vilified in newspaper commentaries and whose name pops up in letters to the editor? Why were the police called to a school board meeting last summer when Lynn went over her three minutes of public comment time at a school board meeting?

With the school board redrafting its policy on encouraging parental involvement the question gets dicey. What parents will be involved and why? Will Lynn be encouraged? I doubt it. Current school board members are not the first to take Lynn’s advocacy personally, and policy or not, she’s been demanding parent input for most of her nineteen years in Temecula.

I met Lynn six years ago when we worked to form P.E.A.C.E. – Parents for Ethnic Awareness in Children’s Education. This group came together in the wake of the brutal beating of Frantz Aboubaker, then a fourth grader at Temecula Elementary School. "Parents need to be included. The school board cannot work in isolation," Schoeffler asserted.

Few parents have made more of an impact on the direction of this district than Schoeffler. Her resume includes the Community Partnership, coordinator of Reading Buddies, and PTA Boards at Margarita Middle School and Rancho Elementary School. These merited her a lifetime PTA honorary membership and recognition by the International Reading Association. Add to that the state mandated AIDS curriculum committee, the Character Education Task Force, and the last accreditation committee for TVHS. Lynn helped found the Parent Advisory Board at TVHS and Margarita Middle School and the Scholarship Foundation at TVHS.

Attending countless school board meetings and workshops, Schoeffler has made it her mission to make parent involvement a meaningful phrase. "Recent headlines said ‘School Board urges parent involvement’, but the only sanctioned parent involvement seems to be three lone parents on each site council," Schoeffler said. "I’m seeing a loss of interest. I’m so tired of fighting. I’m so tired of being denigrated for speaking out."

Schoeffler said the momentum which existed toward more parent involvement has ironically been halted by a board who campaigned on precisely that issue, "The people who used to do the heavy committee work have now been designated as the enemy and so are putting their energy elsewhere. It’s not just volunteering, as parents we have to ask questions. The policies of this school board really affect kids, and my question is, has there been enough parental input that we are going to be happy with that?"

Currently Schoeffler volunteers weekly to help students at Margarita Middle School with after school homework. "We understand that students who have their parents support and interest do better," said Schoeffler. "That means more than making sure they have a dictionary, a desk and a light. How can [the school board] do that if they don’t ask us? If they don’t demand our help?"

To board members and administrators who wish Schoeffler would be a good old soldier and fade away, I have some bad news. In my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, "She’ll be baaack."