PSA Hosts Second Parent Conference in Grapevine, Texas

Grapevine, Texas – Parents Step Ahead (PSA) had its third Parent Conference at Timberline Elementary School (Timberline), which was held on Thursday, May 14, 2015 in the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District (GCISD). This was the second year in a row Timberline has had a Parents Step Ahead Parent Conference.

Timberline, located in Grapevine, Texas, is a public PK-5 elementary school.  Opened in 1979, the mission statement of Timberline is, “Together, we are leaders at Timberline. By practicing the seven habits we LEAD.”

With more than 150 in attendance at the conference, parents from Timberline enjoyed the presentations on “Preventive Health/Healthy living,” presented by United Way of Tarrant County, “Making the Best out of Community Resources,” by the Grapevine Community Outreach Center, created by the Grapevine Police Department (Grapevine PD). And “Understanding Bullying and Social Cruelty,” that was presented by Officer Moses Cabrera and Officer Gutierrez, from the Grapevine PD. Officer Cabrera has been a part of the Administration Division, working as a School Resource Officer assigned to the Grapevine Middle School for the past five years.

United Way’s Juan Daniel Garcia, a lifelong resident of the Northside of Ft Worth, presented the topic of “Healthy Living” Thursday night. The seminar addressed and answered the question of why it’s important to watch what you eat, exercise, a visit to the doctor and how all three factors works together to make up a healthy life regardless your age. Garcia has had over 27 years of community work as a coach, teacher, youth minister, community organizer, social worker, community health worker, outreach worker, and community advocate.

Coordinator, Colby Mowery of the Grapevine Community Outreach Center also presented to the parents of Timberline about the vast amount of resources in the community of Grapevine.

“Our job in the Community Outreach Center, is to decrease the amount of crime in Grapevine by focusing in further involvement in the community, by offering recreation, education, cultural understanding and social assistance.” said Mowery. “Since the Community Center has opened we have seen a drop in crime in the past ten years, due to this extra effort of involvement.”

A graduate from Grapevine High School, Mowery has worked in various cross-cultural urban environments, working among homeless youth and adults, urban at-risk youth, and immigrants struggling to assimilate to a new culture.

The PSA Community Resource Fair in Timberline featured 19 community organizations in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Other major contributors were the, Walmart and McDonald’s for providing dinner for all participants.

The door prize of a brand new laptop computer was won by Beatriz Balderas, a parent who attended the conference “I don’t have a computer at home, so this is something remarkable for me!” said Balderas, “The program was great; I learned a lot that I didn’t know about my community before. Like the ESL classes that are free at the community center, I didn’t know we had access to that.”

The next Parents Step Ahead Parent Conference will be held in the Irving Independent School District at John R. Good Elementary School, Tuesday, May 26th. For more information please call at (214) 357-2186.

About Parents Step Ahead

Parents Step Ahead is a 501-C3 nonprofit organization with a mission “to recognize, educate, and enable and empower parents to take a proactive role in the educational and personal development of their children.” The organization works in partnership with corporations and community organizations to offer a series of programs for parents to demonstrate the importance of parental involvement. Programs are free including dinner and childcare. www.parentsstepahead.org.

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