PTO Today

Sonya Branch wants what’s best for kids, and she’s not about to let the fact that she works three jobs and is raising two kids on her own get in the way of making a difference. Branch is also a brand new PTA president,  working to establish a parent group at her son’s middle school. This article chronicles her efforts to recruit officers and get parents more involved at a struggling school. Fantastic work!

The PTO at Pine Grove Elementary in Rowley, Mass. knows how to tell a good joke. When the school entered a contest for a makeover of its PE equipment room, the PTO helped produce a video top 10 list of the reasons the school deserved to win. Apparently the message got across, because Pine Grove was named a runner-up in the contest, earning a $1,000 prize.

It’s not the first time the PTO has used humor to make a point. Last fall we wrote about the group’s great communication efforts in our article Send a Powerful Message. One way the group reached out to parents made a big impression–a Letterman-inspired list of the top 10 reasons parents should come to meetings and join the PTO!

Today is National Teacher Day.

Don’t worry if the holiday snuck up on you. The NEA has some cool electronic greeting cards your kids can email to their teachers. As an added bonus, the teacher’s name will be included on what’s being called the nation’s largest teacher thank-you card. (You can snail mail your own cards to be incorporated into the giant card, too.)

Today’s also a good time to think about ways your parent group can appreciate teachers all year long. Be sure to check out our article on this topic, Teacher Appreciation Done Right, which has great ideas on how to do just that.

Need to build excitement for your auction? Consider the example of the Hollis (N.H.) Elementary Schools’ PTA, which secured a one-of-a-kind donation for its online auction–a rocket payload valued at $25,000. The chance to send an object into space stirred the imagination of kids and parents alike, and attracted media attention for the group’s online and live auctions.

For many school districts, the slowing economy means tightening budgets and trimming staffs. A Colorado parent group is making a case that tough times hurt schools in another way: parents that volunteer during the school day are having to get jobs to make ends meet.

The parent group wants to pay for classroom aides to help teachers out, but it’s against the school district’s rules. Although the parents have the best of intentions, paying for school employees raises questions about the equity and reliability of the funding. So what’s a PTO to do? We explore the issue in depth here.

If your school serves as a polling place, why not use election days to boost your collection programs? In Framingham, Mass., the Hemenway Elementary PTO asked voters to drop off Box Tops for Education coupons while casting their ballots at the school. The PTO hopes to raise $500 on Super Tuesday alone.

The Arizona Republic’s got a great guest column by a PTO president about why she volunteers at her children’s school. No surprises here. She does it for the kids. But I love what she says about her motivation to do the job:

“I don’t do this for the recognition. I do this because it gives me time to spend with my kids, it teaches them to give back to the community, they know I’m involved in their school and I can’t put a price on the pride I see in their faces.”

What about you? How would you change this sentence to describe your own motivation?

In a candid post, blogger Denise Gonzalez-Walker talks about the differences between her son’s “volunteer-rich” elementary school and a low-income school she volunteered at where parents were largely absent. The reason, she found, was that many of the parents work multiple jobs with unflexible schedules.

What can parent groups do to reach out to these moms and dads? Has your group found effective ways to involve parents that juggle two or three jobs to keep food on the table?

Ever wonder what the gang from “Friends” might be doing now? Courteney Cox imagines that her very Type A character Monica took over the PTA after moving to the suburbs with Chandler and the kids. While it’s easy to imagine Monica heading up a bake sale or chairing a committee, I can’t help but wonder what kind of crazy situations she’d get into. What do you think — what kind of parent group leader would Monica make?

Thinking about having a family reading night at your school? You’ll want to read all about this New Jersey elementary’s monthly reading club, which awards students prizes based upon their parents’ participation. If you’ve got older kids, you’ll be interested in this Illinois middle school’s family reading night, which offered parent workshops on language development and interactive storytelling. For even more great ideas and tips for planning an event like this at your school, click here for a free copy of PTO Today’s Family Reading Night planning kit.