Dads dig in as school volunteers

But he was startled when he saw the roster of the school’s Parent Teacher Group: Only one man was a board member.

“And people would kind of snicker about him, saying ‘Isn’t that weird, a guy in the PTG,’ ’’ Boynton said. “He really stood out as being the only male involved.’’

As his three younger children entered school, Boynton noticed something else: His wife, who immersed herself in volunteer work, seemed to have more friends than he did.

“As liberated as Concord might be, for the most part dads go off to work and moms stay home,’’ Boynton said. “Which makes it easier for moms to help out during the day in traditional school volunteer roles in the classroom, the library, and so forth.’’

He shared his insights with another father of an Alcott student.

“I said to him, ‘What if we create a group for men to meet once a month, do special projects valued in the school, and also give dads a chance to get to know each other?’ ’’

One year after founding the Alcott Dads Group, Boynton and his newfound buddies have redefined the coffee klatch.

The group has grown from a handful of fathers to more than two dozen. To accommodate the schedules of busy professionals, they hold their meetings at night at a local restaurant: “For about 30 to 45 minutes, we cover business. The rest is purely social,’’ Boynton said. And they’ve put some muscle into their volunteerism, creating a baseball field for the school.

Their primary goal was to get more fathers involved in the school, a mission that dovetails with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s plea to fathers in a national address earlier this fall.

But the Alcott Dads Group figured it made sense to tackle some projects that the Parent Teacher Group didn’t have the time or manpower for, rather than just supplement existing volunteer efforts.

In other words, the guys wanted to do some heavy lifting. And they started off with a bang.

“The Alcott School is four years old, but the baseball diamond had never been completed,’’ Boynton said. “So we undertook all the legwork to get the permits and permission to go in and create a baseball field. We spent a Saturday morning edging the diamond. A father in the group who owns a construction company brought in excavation equipment. The field was ready for use five days after we began. We held an opening day celebration for it last April, with the school band playing and the principal throwing out the first pitch.’’

Fathers in other communities agree with Boynton that the obstacle to school volunteer work may be more logistical than ideological. Mark Wadness was something of a trailblazer when he became a Parent Teacher Organization member and eventually president at Cabot School in Newton in the early 1990s, but only after making a lifestyle change.

“At the time, I had just closed my business and decided to become a stay-at-home dad,’’ Wadness said. “Otherwise, I would never have been able to have the level of involvement I had in the schools.’’

Following his two children through the Newton system, he served on the School Council at F.A. Day Middle School and then as PTO president at Newton North High School.

George Murnaghan sees things a little differently. “I never felt like the Rosa Parks of Lexington,’’ he said of his two years in the Parent Teacher Association at Bridge Elementary School.

“It’s true that I was the only man on the PTA board during the years I served, but I saw plenty of fathers involved with different activities around the school. They may not be available for regular daily volunteer work the way some of the stay-at-home moms are, but when you ask the fathers at our school to step forward, they always do.’’

Moreover, said Murnaghan, the range of professional capabilities of men and women in his community fills all kinds of needs. “We had a situation involving the possibility of some redistricting that required projections of growth of student population. A father who is a PhD mathematician worked to show that the district’s calculations were not mathematically sound. Overall, I have always felt that the Bridge School community is very inclusive.’’

And for Jon Boroshok, vice president of the Florence Roche-Boutwell PTA, which represents two of the four elementary schools in the Groton-Dunstable Regional School District, there’s an additional advantage to spending a lot of time at the school: He knows his children’s friends and can picture how they spend their time at school.

This spring the Alcott dads will tackle their next major project, construction of an outdoor classroom. Group member David Fisher, a professional landscape architect and member of Concord’s Zoning Board of Appeals, is already drawing on his expertise in permitting regulations to lay the groundwork.

Fisher knows that the results will be not only a better campus for his children and their peers but an enriching experience for the dads.

“This is a great way for us to spend time together. For men in particular, I think it’s much easier to get to know someone when you’re shoveling and raking ground than sitting next to each other at back-to-school night.’’