The Academy of St. Adalbert, in Berea, Ohio, has only 186 students enrolled. Still, the Parent Teacher Unit at the preK-8 school accomplished as much as many larger groups at bigger schools do in an academic year, earning it the award for Outstanding Parent Group at a Small School in PTO Today’s 2013 Parent Group of the Year search.

Although St. Adalbert is a Catholic school, it boasts a student body that is religiously diverse, as well as racially and economically diverse. The school has an inclusion model of education, placing students with learning disabilities in traditional classrooms. Through a partnership with an autism support program, St. Adalbert has 26 students in an autism inclusion program. From this diversity, a strong, collaborative parent-teacher group formed.

During the past 10 years, a group of parents from the school rebuilt the organization, which at one point hadn’t been very active. As it became clear that the PTU was having a positive effect on the experiences of students, more volunteers signed on.

Last year, with a strong base of volunteers, the PTU focused its efforts on providing free or low-cost family activities to build a sense of community. They had several movie nights in the school cafeteria,a back-to-school pool party in August, and a toboggan night in the winter. Families marched in the city’s Memorial Day parade and won the award for best float in the holiday parade in December. The PTU also provided lunch for three holiday parties throughout the year as well as for field day, and it organized a holiday shop so students could buy gifts for their families at Christmas. From an academic standpoint, the group paid to bring both author Brian P. Cleary and a traveling science demonstration to the school. What’s more, the group contributed $10,000 directly to the school to support foreign language instruction and provide additional educational resources.

What the judges loved: More than half of the school’s families volunteered for PTU events during the school year. Part of the school’s mission is to foster responsibility, discipline, and cooperation, and that clearly comes through in how the PTU interacts with parents. Past president Laura Eizember says, “I think the challenge with any parent organization is to keep growing new leaders and continuing to empower parents to take an active role, and that is something our board really tried to focus on.”

Cool fact: The teachers at St. Adalbert held an appreciation breakfast for parents. They hosted the event at the school after Mass one Friday morning. Teachers made homemade food and gave the parents little silver flowers that wave back and forth. “A lot of the parents put it on their dashboards,” Eizember says. “It was a very nice event and nice for parents to have a chance to get together.”