PTO Today

This California (where else?) school and its PTA put together a great, comprehensive all-school event around the environment and healthy habits and fun.   Check out their Eco-Extravaganza here. 

Especially neat, in my opinion, because these guys really went all-out.  Goes with a column I wrote a year or two back saying Go Big or Don’t Go at All.  Basically, I think PTOs and PTAs do far better when they do fewer things in a big way than a lot of things in a so-so way. You agree?

Just a little link to a calendar item about a school hosting a Get Movin’ Night this weekend. I’ve been to a couple of these, and they’re a great mix of fun and physical activity (even if your school doesn’t have its own pool!). You can check out our Get Movin’ Night here and all of our School Family Nights here .

I suspect field trips might be completely gone by now if not for the work of school PTOs and PTAs.  Keep it up!

This column in Education Week caught my eye, as it makes a compelling case why we should save field trips. I often think of the work that PTOs do as being about making sure that schools are places filled with life and spirit, not just big imposing brick walls of book-learnin’. Parent involvement (of all sorts). Playgrounds. Family events. Field trips.  These are parts of the tapestry that yield the kind of people that we (at least I) want coming out of our schools. 

Soap box moment over (though you can feel free to jump up on it yourself with your $0.02 below) …

UPDATE:  I was visiting yesterday (at our New Jersey PTO Today Expo) with our friends from Target, and I was reminded about their generous new Field Trip Grants program.  Process is closed for this year, but I’m told it’s coming back for the 2008-2009 school year.  Nice! 

Here’s a twist on the traditional schoolyard carnival. This PA PTO combined their fair with a classic car show and not only added some fun and interest to their day but made some nice extra bucks, too.  Great work!

UPDATE AS OF 3/19/08: We had an overwhelming amount of interest in this program and it is now sold out. We know these sampling programs are popular so we’ll keep working on bringing more of them to you in the future!

Yep, another sampling offer to add even more excitement and fun to one of your upcoming events. This time it’s Tide and participating groups will receive free samples to distribute to parents at an event. Could be a nice tie-in with your spring carnival, field day, BBQ, or any other event involving sticky fingers, grass, mud, or all of the above! Don’t worry, ending up with muddy, dirty kids isn’t required to participate

This particular Tide product is so new it just hit the store shelves in February! And we’re told it has Dawn in it to help with those pesky stains.

Couple things to note:

• You need to have an event scheduled between early April and early June.
• You’ll receive 192 free samples along with “thank you” message cards and notes that you can distribute to parents attending your event.
• Limited number of samples available so participation is on a first come first served basis.

Lots more info and details on how to sign up here - ptotoday.com/tide

400 or so of our (new!) close friends are having a great day today in Columbus, Ohio.  It’s our first event of the 2008 Expo season. Dozens and dozens of exhibitors, talented entertainers and fun, and PTO Today experts offering insight and answering questions on all of your most vexing PTO challenges…. Great combo.

Next 10 weeks or so include Expos in Marlborough (MA), North Jersey, suburban Chicago and Denver.  Hope you can make it.

Ahhhh…. parents using common sense as a response.  Love it.

Montgomery County (MD) parents respond to to Councilman who wanted to ban McTeacher nights at McDonalds.  I blogged about it here. 

So parents point out that 1) the nights are supporting very valuable work; and 2) the Councilman’s comparing McTeacher nights to holding a fundraiser in a cigarette shop is a joke.  Good work.

Sometimes I just shake my head at the food police.  Sure, there are definitely occasions when marketing to kids and marketing through schools can go too far, but this MD councilman’s implied claim that McDonalds McTeacher Nights make kids fat is over-the-top.

Hmmmm… the teachers flipping burgers and working the counter at a popular restaurant?  Might be fun. Might humanize the teachers and bring some spirit to the school.  Might even connect some parents with teachers (and other parents) in a non-threatening, casual setting. With a few bucks earned for the school to boot.

I’m guessing there may be some more important matters in the Montgomery County schools for this gentleman to focus on.

I found this column from Education Week fascinating.  Admittedly, I’m a bit odd.

While many make the case that more and more effective parent involvement is an essential element of improving our schools, too many school leaders treat it as an after-thought to be nominally checked off a long list of “things I have to pay lip service to”.  To some degree, that’s partially because there are so, so many things that administrators are asked to handle.

But it’s also because 1) there’s still a lack of understanding about how basic and essential parent involvement is (not a “nice to have”; a “must have”); 2) many leaders don’t know how to make an impact on involvement (they should check out Family Friendly Schools); and 3) laws like the No Child left Behind Act often throw parent involvement provisions in with no teeth.  This column addresses all three issues really well.

If you’re a real involvement wonk, the same author worked on a comprehensive involvement report that can be found here.

In our opinion, this is just a step too far for this Missouri PTO.  What’d they do?  Sent a note home to parents advising parents not to let their kids see the Golden Compass movie.  Several parent complaints followed and superintendent reports his office never approved the note home. The big issue:  what’s the role of the parent group here?  Of course, this would be a bad choice for a Family Movie Night, and that would be a perfectly appropriate decision for the PTO leadership to make.  But advising parents what movies kids should watch outside of school? There’s an area that just seems well out-of-bounds for the local parent group.