Jill Tipograph, a camp consultant, said most high-end sleep-away camps in the Northeast now employ full-time parent liaisons like Ms. Miller, who earns $6,000 plus a waiver of the camp's $10,000 tuition for each of her two daughters.
Those affected include educational aides, parent liaisons and career placement assistants, though many could be rehired over the summer as schools decide how to use discretionary money.
Ms. Coleman describes the role of parent liaison as part coach, part advocate, part partner and part medium, channeling a child's sometimes shaky emotional state to parents.
And Gladys Echevarria, the school's parent liaison, said that some volunteers were not cut out for classroom work because their own education is slender.
Just ask the parent liaison for my younger child's classroom, whose response to my failure to properly manage a canned goods drive was only slightly less frosty than that of a rogue nation asked to cease nuclear development.
When Marion Murray, 66, returned from three years of Peace Corps service in Kenya to become parent liaison for Timothy Dwight Elementary School in New Haven, she remembered the shipments Mrs. King had sent and decided to call her for another donation.
Marla Coleman, a past president of the American Camp Association who has served as a parent liaison at Camp Echo, a sleep-away camp in the Catskills, pointed out that with the proper amount of hand-holding, camp can be as much a declaration of independence for parents as it is for children.
In explaining parental yearning for frequent contact with their children and reassurances about their safety, Ms. Coleman, whose family owns a day camp where she now works as a parent liaison, quotes Mary Pipher, an anthropologist and the author of "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" (1994).
The components of family friendly schools may include establishment of parent liaison officer, regular parent-teacher contact, ensuring that parents assist in homework and encouraging parental decisions in school administration [ 18].
Some are run by foundations: Itaú Social, the charitable arm of a big bank, is coaching teachers in struggling schools, paying for parent-school liaison workers and training head teachers in management.
The coordinators will act as liaisons between parents and principals at each of the city's 1,200 schools, and will earn $30,000 to $39,000 annually.
