Parents go online to stay aware
CITYWIDE Social networking isn’t just for kids anymore.
Santa Monica High School parent Ping Ho was trying to find ways to promote her son’s upcoming concert when she decided to turn to Samohi-PALS, a Yahoo! groups mailing list, where she was able to send a notification to its more than 1,100 members.
E-mail lists for school communities — like Samohi-PALS for Santa Monica High School and eMHS for Malibu High School — have become an increasingly popular communication tool for parents and administrators in the past few years, allowing parents to trade tips on math tutors, remind the school community of upcoming theatrical productions, even seek advice on how to throw birthday parties.
A mother of a student at Santa Monica High School, Ho said she has used Samohi- Pals, which is moderated through Yahoo! Groups, for several reasons in the past, including finding out about deadlines to sign up for academic programs and finding the right SAT prep class.
On any given day, a subscriber to Samohi-PALS might receive 10 to 20 messages from other users, asking about when yearbooks are set to be released, when to buy tickets to the prom and which schools offer the best driving programs.
It’s a new phenomenon called Web 2.0, said Vwani Roychowdhury, a UCLA professor of engineering.
“This is like user participation through the Internet,” he said. “Users are both the consumers as well as the publishers. They generate content as well as consume content.”
It’s part of the big wave including MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, all popular among the high school and college crowd.
“Now it’s becoming smaller and more diversified, like this parents group at Santa Monica High School,” he said.
The eMHS mailing list was started in August 2003 on Yahoo! Groups by founder Sonia Ottusch, a parent of two students at Malibu High School.
“People would read the notes and show up at his concert.” — Ho said
“People were so wonderfully supportive,”
The communication process between students, educators and parents was a cumbersome one before eMHS came along, with monthly newsletters being sent to one household per student via snail mail. For the students who came from divorced families and multiple households, it meant that only one parent would receive the newsletter.
“It wasn’t the optimal way and timely updates weren’t happening,” Ottusch said.
Shortly before she started eMHS, Ottusch suffered from a spinal fracture injury and found solace and support through an online discussion group for people with major back problems.
It was then she realized that a similar discussion forum would greatly benefit the school community with its communication.
Today, eMHS has grown to more than 1,200 members for a school whose student population is less than 1,300.
Parents have also used the mailing list for emotional support and advice. An anonymous parent recently sent out an e-mail on the eMHS list mentioning that his child has suicidal thoughts. The e-mail was followed by a flood of responses from concerned parents, offering advice and names of therapists who might help.
Another parent on eMHS mentioned that her child wanted to throw a party and asked for advice. Her e-mail was followed with a series of e-mails offering horror stories from parties that they had thrown for their children.
Samohi-PALS subscriber Deb Love uses the mailing list to post information for Samohi theater, sometimes sending out “e-blasts” containing photos, graphics and links to the Samohi theater Web site.
But along with the benefits of mailing list comes drawbacks. Love said she tends to rely on e-mailing and forgets to call people for notifications on Samohi theater. The technically uninclined have complained that they missed the reminders and don’t find out about the event, she said.
Not all parents subscribe to Samohi-PALS, so the e-mails are not really reaching the entire community, she added.
“You have to sign up and many parents don’t bother to do it so you’re not really communicating with the entire Samohi community,” she said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 26, 2007. Read the original PDF.