Kim Truss is a parent who is a member of the Fort Worth parent group that is part of the Powerful Parent Movement, a coalition of national parent advocacy organizations that also includes similar groups in San Antonio, Memphis and Nashville. Truss hopes the new group can help parents feel like they have a voice in their children’s education. Often, she said, parents feel like they’re the only ones struggling to get what’s best for their kids. Truss said she became concerned about the district while she was working with an after-school program at several low-income housing properties in the city. She noticed many kids in her program brought home report cards with Fs for several consecutive six-week grading periods. Struggling students didn’t seem to be making any progress, she said, and at the end of the year, they wouldn’t make it to the next grade. Since then, Truss has been involved as a parent organizer with Rocketship Dennis Dunkins Elementary School, a new charter campus that opened this month in Fort Worth’s Stop Six neighborhood. She’s been impressed with how committed the leadership at Rocketship seems to include parents’ voices in decisions about the school.

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