This education non-profit empowers parents to fight for public schools. Here’s how

Miami Herald | By Amanda Geduld | October 25, 2023

One early morning, years ago, then-6th grader Mina Hosseini was hanging out with friends in her school’s auditorium, when the group was reprimanded by a teacher. She still remembers the moment he told them to settle down and show some gratitude for the education they were receiving in the United States. In Iran, he added, children merely go to school to become terrorists.

Hosseini still isn’t sure if that teacher knew she was Iranian.

“I just sunk into my chair,” she said in a recent interview with the Herald. “I remember melting and just feeling shame and confusion.”

That night, back at home, her father assured her that what her teacher said was wrong. He told her to ignore it and move on.

“It was the one thing, though, that I couldn’t ignore,” she said.

The next day she confronted the teacher.

At a rally on April 1, 2023, Youth Leader Santiago Rodriguez speaks out in opposition of HB-1. He discussed his experience as a new student, recently arriving from Venezuela, and the need for increased resources and funding in schools. Courtesy of Mina Hosseini.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been made to feel like an outsider as a student in Miami’s public school system. But it was the first time she had pushed herself “to be uncomfortable and bold, on behalf of something right,” she said. It’s her earliest memory of activism.

She carries the memory of that morning with her today, in her work as executive director of P.S. 305, a nonprofit organization committed to building a coalition of parents, students, and other educational stakeholders who are fighting for equity and resisting the movement to privatize public education. The group works to democratize civic engagement, making it more accessible to parents in historically marginalized neighborhoods and schools throughout Miami.

Hosseini hopes that the work of P.S. 305 can help build a school system in which students are never made to feel the way she once did.

EMPOWERING PARENTS

Hosseini understands the power of education: it’s the “mechanism by which young people had the ability to move and elevate into higher spaces– or to just get pushed out into a system and fall into a world that we weren’t ready for.”

Though she studied to be an accountant, Hosseini decided to follow a different path. “I needed to be out in the community doing community work. And I needed to be in spaces trying to create and curate the conditions that I would have wanted.”

She asked herself, “What systems influence and impact people the most?”

P.S. 305 supports the Miami-Dade County Council PTA/PTSA and delivers a workshop “The Real Cost of Privatizing Public Schools” at their 2023 Leadership Training. Courtesy of Mina Hosseini.

This question led Hosseini to volunteer in the juvenile justice system as a guardian ad litem, an advocate for children. The experience was transformative, showing her more ways in which systems that serve children are under-resourced.

Eventually, Hosseini began working as the parent organizer at P.S. 305, a non-profit which works to empower parents through leadership development, organizing to ensure that historically marginalized communities have a voice in the public school system.

A key cornerstone of the group’s ethos: parents and community members can’t change a system until they understand it. So P.S. 305 equips them with the tools they need to analyze the systems at play and determine the most effective levers to pull to make change.

Volunteer opportunities include campaigning, phone banking, and attending Zoom watch parties of school board meetings. Through these Zoom discussion groups parents are provided an opportunity to make meaning of a convoluted system together, according to Hosseini. P.S. 305 has also developed a research and communications program to mobilize volunteers to oppose school closures and privatization.

In 2018, Hosseini developed and launched the organization’s first cohort of parent leaders.

Here’s how the inaugural fellowship worked: parents from historically marginalized neighborhoods came together for a two-month leadership training series. They’d meet for two hours a week and engage in conversations around school choice and accountability, social emotional learning and education equity.

Hosseini describes the learning style of the program as experiential– parents attended school board meetings and then debriefed them.

Once parents were trained, they were encouraged to join committees and develop campaigns. They eventually met with school board members and advocated for a new and fully integrated approach to social emotional learning in Miami public schools.

Mina Hosseini and Daniella Pierre, President of the Miami-Dade Branch of the NAACP and graduate of the P.S. 305 Parent Power Bootcamp, at Period Action Day in Miami. Courtesy of Mina Hosseini.

Historically, the fellowship trained anywhere from eight to 12 parents per cohort– mostly mothers in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The program was briefly put on hold during the pandemic, but the organization is preparing to re-launch it in the coming months, expanding it to 18 parents: two from each of the nine Miami school districts.

This year’s fellowship will be more intensive and will focus on the district’s budget.

Hosseini emphasized that the work is guided by the experiences of those impacted: parents.

This summer, P.S. 305 launched a youth summit, a seven-week institute that mirrored much of the parent institute. Students attended and analyzed board meetings, focused on issues they were passionate about and then returned to testify. Hosseini said the program was designed with the intention of allowing young people to design their own learning.

Mina Hosseini and students Jamya Bain, Morghan Johnson, Gabrielle Abrams and Makaylia Ferguson celebrate the end of the P.S. 305 2023 Summer Youth Civic Institute. Courtesy of Mina Hosseini.

“So much of my life as a young person, I felt disempowered,” she said. “And so much of my work now is helping people remember their power– and what is their power when we act collectively.”

As the guiding principle of the organization, Hosseini said that she turns to a favorite Nelson Mandela quote: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

‘WHERE CAN WE HAVE A SAY?’

Janielle Murphy attended her first P.S. 305 meeting in 2018, when her son was a middle schooler in Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

She kept attending, and eventually became a parent leader, because of the mission of the organization: to maintain public schools and make them more equitable.

Growing up as a Black woman in Miami, Murphy said she never felt included in the public school system. From a young age, she got involved in organizations like student government so she could have a say.

Mina Hosseini, executive director of P.S. 305, and parent leader Janielle Murphy outside of the Miami-Dade County School Board Administration Building following a school board meeting. Amanda Geduld.

This same drive has led her to become deeply engaged in her own kids’ schools. She re-launched the Parent Teachers Association at one of her son’s schools and serves as a board member, parent leader, and volunteer with P.S. 305.

After going through P.S. 305’s parent fellowship program, she joined the school board’s budget subcommittee to learn about the process and advocate for fair funding of schools. She knows she and other community members can’t fix a system that they don’t first understand. So she’s continuing to work to better understand where her voice will carry the most weight.

“Where can we have a say?” she asked. “[We’re] making sure we understand where we can have a say.”

If you want to get involved with P.S. 305 or be kept up to date on their work, visit http://www.ps305.org/sign-up.html.