There was no mistaking Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard's mood at a recent meeting with members of Community Advocates for Educational Excellence, a faith-based support group for parents of city school students. Brizard, his head hung low at times, the wide smile absent, was frustrated, even angered by the meeting's tone and discourse. CAFEE members, led by Minister Clifford Florence of Central Church of Christ, made it clear: they are dissatisfied with the district, its treatment of parents, and, they said, Brizard's lack of attention to CAFEE.

"The community does not trust the district," one member said.

Delivered curtly, her words were thrown at Brizard like a drink in the face. It is a sentiment frequently expressed by parents at monthly school board meetings. And it is a virulent obstacle to increasing parental involvement - something that Brizard says is necessary if he is to achieve his goal of reaching a 75 percent graduation rate by 2012.

Van White, the school board's vice president, defended Brizard at the CAFEE meeting.

"The man has been on the job for eight months. That's why I had his back," White says. "Jean-Claude is moving this district forward, but people don't want to talk about that."

The relationship between the district and its nearly 40,000 parents is complicated. Many parents want to be involved, but are stuck working long hours at multiple jobs or have personal problems that make them unavailable. And some parents have limited educations and literacy problems of their own.

Parental involvement varies from school to school, officials say. At School 46 and School of the Arts, some events are standing-room only. Other schools have almost no support from parents.

But some parents who do want to be involved say that the district is unwelcoming and really doesn't want their help.

Loretha McCullough was president of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at Wilson Magnet High School for more than two years and vice president for one year until she stepped down in disgust.

"I did everything I could for parents and kids, but I got no district support," she says. "I will never get involved with the district again. Never."

It would seem that low student performance would be the biggest concern among parents, but McCullough says that's not necessarily the case.

"It's important, but it's the organization, the administration, and the way they treat parents - that's the real problem," she says.

McCullough's daughter was an excellent student until the eighth grade, McCullough says, when a group of girls began to threaten and bully her.

"All I was asking was that they provide a safe environment for my daughter," she says. "That is their responsibility by law."

McCullough gave her daughter permission to defend herself.

When McCullough's daughter was given a long-term suspension for fighting - and the other girls were not punished - McCullough wanted an explanation and contacted former Superintendent Manny Rivera and each school board member by certified mail.

"I never heard from a single one of them; not even a phone call," McCullough says.

The lack of responsiveness was characteristic of the district, McCullough says, citing her time as PTSA president.

"My experience with them is not unusual," she says. "I was there. I know it was typical."

Like McCullough, Carolee Albert is touted on the district's website as a "Parent of the Month" for her volunteer work. But like many of the parents contacted for this story, Albert is upset and discouraged. She has five grandchildren in the district and she says that she used to be active in several of the schools. But not anymore. Her biggest concern: a lack of communication between parents, teachers, and administrators.

"When there is a problem, say Johnny is absent from school, parents don't want to get a call after a week or two telling them that he hasn't been to school," she says. "They want to know that first morning why he didn't show up. No wonder the parent goes down to the school hollering mad."

The frustration is one reason that some parents turn to groups like CAFEE, Alliance for Quality Education, Anti-Racism Movement, and the Ibero-American Action League for support when working with the district. The groups - from a mix of faith, political action, and social services backgrounds - can often become vocal and visible in ways that individual parents can't. How much of the community they represent, their motives, and their effectiveness vary. Alliance for Quality Education lobbies Albany for more money for Rochester's schools. And Ibero supports the city's Hispanic community, which accounts for more than 20 percent of the district's students.

But McCullough says that some members of the various groups are not there for students and parents.

"They don't really do the work," she says. "They attend meetings because they are looking for political opportunities, they're running for something, or they're looking for a job."

While the district works with each of these groups, it also has a wide range of internal opportunities for parental involvement - from school-level parent-teacher associations to the Parent Council at the administrative level.

"We're in a partnership with parents," says Nicolle Crocker, the district's liaison with parents. "Some schools do very well at that, and some schools don't."

The challenge, she says, is to find ways to reach the greatest majority of parents when many do not own computers, speak English, or have current phone numbers or permanent addresses.

But Crocker doesn't agree that all parents are unhappy or mistrust the district.

"I don't think we can please everyone every time," she says. "When they say, ‘the community doesn't trust the district,' what they're really saying is, ‘I don't trust you.' But we also had 4,000 parents contact the Customer Service Center last year and we tracked each one of those issues to resolution."

The Customer Service Center, started under former Superintendent Rivera, was set up to handle all parental complaints.

The city school district is fundamentally different from suburban districts, Crocker says, in that parents depend on city schools for parenting help out of necessity. Parents may not know that their child is truant because they're working two jobs, for instance, and a single phone call home from the district may not be enough. Counseling or deeper intervention may be needed.

Most of his meetings with CAFEE have been productive, Brizard says. But if that's changing, he says, he'll stop going.

"I have had some meetings with the faith community that are truly phenomenal," he says. "We've discussed the black male situation with not staying in school, literacy, and tutoring. And we've talked about how to use the bully pulpit to push the importance of parent involvement and education in the home. But I'm going to excuse myself from these meetings if it's going to be a session to just toss grenades."

His goal, Brizard says, is to enlist the support of groups like CAFEE, Ibero, and the Alliance for Quality Education to forge one working advisory group - the Districtwide Parent Advisory Council - consisting of parents with children enrolled in city schools.

"They have to understand I am not interested in replacing the board of education," he says. "But we all have certain goals in common that we can meet and work on together."

But the trust issue still bothers Brizard.

"Look, we have to make a decision about whether we are going to spend every meeting going through the history of these relationships with the district and what went wrong, or find ways to move forward," he says. "I've seen this problem before, but never this intense. You've heard that saying, ‘It takes a lifetime to build trust and a second to destroy it.' Well, we don't have that kind of time."

A work session to establish the Districtwide Parent Advisory Council will be held on Saturday, September 13, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the First Church of God, 334 Clarissa Street. To RSVP, call 262-8000, ext. 1190, by September 8.