After reports surfaced last spring of students being wrongly sent home from Chicago public schools for not wearing their required uniforms, a concerned group of parents decided to take action.

Rather than pursue legal action, they organized.

Students who attend uniforms-required schools can’t be barred from school for not wearing a uniform, according to Chicago Public Schools policy. So parents like Pat Hamilton began efforts to inform other parents of their student’s rights.

“A lot of parents didn’t know their child’s rights had been violated by being sent home for not having uniforms,” said Hamilton, a parent of two public school students.

Hamilton is a member of the Chicago Parents Union, an organization of nearly 100 parents that operates as a traditional union. Their focus is encouraging other parents to be advocates for their children in the city’s public schools.

Thought to be the first public school-based parents union in the nation, the group was formed almost a year ago and has 13 union stewards acting as advocates for parents. Their goal is to have a union representative in all of the city’s 666 public schools, said Steve Ross, union president.

“That’s an ambitious plan,” said Ross, whose 17-year-old daughter attends the School of Technology at South Shore High School, “but we could then have the chance to get CPS to bargain.”

A parents union in Los Angeles was launched in 2006, according to its Web site, parentsunion.org. But their primary focus was expanding the number of charter schools in the city.

Julie Woestehoff, a Chicago Parent Union member, said the parents union here is different because they are working directly with public schools.

“We’re here to support the public schools we have,” Woestehoff said, “not to weaken them by pulling kids out of neighborhood schools.” She is also executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, a group founded in 1987 that helped launch the parents union network.

Dana McDermott, an expert in parental involvement in education and assistant professor with DePaul University’s School for New Learning, said the concept of a parent’s union was new to her. But she added that the parents may not feel their voice is being heard through more traditional means such as local school councils.

Created in 1998, Chicago’s local school councils have 11 voting members including local school staff and parents.

“Parents believe the local school councils might not work as well as they should,” McDermott said. “My guess is they are uniting because there is no other organization through which they can make their voice heard.”

But Monique Bond, communications officer with Chicago Public Schools, said the district welcomes parent involvement, which she said is crucial to progress.

"I think it's important that parents are heard. Parental involvement is critical," Bond said. "We cannot move forward in a positive direction without parental involvement."

One of the union's challenges has been working with school officials to send a memo to all parent in the district reminding them of the uniform policy. But members say they are pursuing a wider agenda.

That agenda could become much wider now that public officials are calling on parents to be more engaged in their childrens' education as a way to prevent youth violence.

“The bureaucrats will speak a good game about parental involvement, but it’s not the case,” said Woestehoff. “They say they want parents to be involved, but they only want parents to be involved if they don’t rock the boat. Parents want to do it. But once you hit that school door, you run into all kinds of barricades, cul-de-sacs. It’s very tricky.”

Wanda Hopkins is a union steward and parent who is shepherding her fourth child, 10-year-old Maya, through the city’s school system. She knows firsthand how difficult it is to advocate on behalf of a child.

“This is what the union does,” said Hopkins. “ It gets parents together to work together.”

Woestehoff said the parents union aims to train parents on how to navigate the school system and make their voices heard in policy decisions. She said this type of parental involvement could also help prevent the kind of violence seen at Fenger High School in September that left 16-year-old Derrion Albert dead in a bloody melee.

“If there had been 25 parents involved at Fenger,” said Woestehoff, “maybe that violence wouldn’t have happened.”

A cadre of parents involved in a school community, Ross said, has the ability to stop youth violence before it starts.

“It would defuse the fight before the gun,” Ross said. “What happened at Fenger High School could have been quashed by a parents union. We know when the fight’s coming. We’re in the trenches, so we have a better perspective for what’s going on in the neighborhood. We live in the neighborhood with the kids. We know when people are angry and sad, because we are angry and sad with them.”

Hopkins is motivated by the hope that what she is doing day after day-- pounding the pavement, recruiting more members and stewards –will prevent more violence. She is working harder after Albert’s slaying, she said, to get parents signed up for the union.

“Why do I do what I do?” said Hopkins.“It’s personal. I don’t want them [perpetrators of youth violence] to kill my children.”

Hamilton said she witnessed the benefits of the union earlier this year when members began informing parents about the district’s uniform policy. Being involved in the union has helped educate her about her rights as a parent.

“I just needed to be empowered,” Hamilton said. “A lot of parents simply don’t know their rights. I’ve learned we have more rights than we knew about.”