PTO Today

Sounds like these folks are making strong involvement progress bringing lessons from statewide training program back to their school.

Love this quote:

“There are four levels of community and school relationships,” Tyree said.

“There are closed doors where no one is welcome, doors open but no one is invited, only invited if asked, and then the partnership school, which is what we want to be.”

That’s dead-on perfect.  Good luck!

What was once a very minor annoyance is becoming a more common challenge for many PTOs and PTAs. We’ve tracked several communities where school parent-teacher groups (PTOs and PTAs) have been banned from using the backpack express to communicate with parents.  I’ll explain below, but cutting to the chase — this is horrible policy that does harm to schools.  And it doesn’t have to be this way.  Nuance and a backbone are both wonderful things.

For background, here’s a post on our message boards about this topic.  And here’s a story from Minnesota about one school board making this poor decision.  And a follow-up from same paper on the after-effects to date.

The real failing here is equating the local school PTO with the local karate school or the Church down the street from the school. That’s hogwash.

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Wow — this is the harshest sentence we’ve seen yet for a PTO or PTA embezzle case.  This Arkansas treasurer convicted of taking $23,000 (and that’s just what they can prove).

We do like the fact that this case was prosecuted and taken seriously. Too often, groups or schools try to sweep these cases under the rug or prosecutors downplay the damage.  Make no mistake — this is stealing from kids and violating a trust.  There’s also often even further damage to the support and involvement at a a particular school for years.

More than worth it to use smart, basic money hanbling procedures.  And to get insured.

Former president from outside Denver arrested — after her kids tried to play lookout on her getaway effort  –  for stealing from her group.  Grrrr.

In this case, the method was forging her co-signers signature on dozens of checks.  Our most basic of financial best practices – making sure that a non-signer opens the checking statement each month — would have likely prevented this one.  Also hope they’re insured. 

This recent column of mine on diffusing PTO drama has been garnering a lot of feedback, so I thought I’d highlight here in the blog, as well.  Seems to have struck a chord with many.

You can read it, but the big point is that all the drama in our PTOs – the big tiffs, the hurt feelings, the perceived slights, all of it — gets directly in the way of building broad involvement and growing community.  yes, there are a certain type who live for the drama, but most of us have plenty of stress (especially these days) and shy away from more.  If your PTO is stress-filled, then is it any wonder you struggle to bring in new people or lots of new people?

Give the column a read.  Would love to hear your own strategies for reducing the drama.  Whaddaya got?

Yeah, I think so.  I certainly feel a bit less unique these days as a dad in the PTO and PTA world. And this story from the Chicago Trib adds some more color to the dad involvement issue.

We’ve covered this in several ways over the years. I wrote a column of my thoughts about what works for bringing in dads.  And our editorial folks covered it with a feature a year or so ago.  There really are some basics that can make a big difference.

Are you seeing any progress in the dad area?  In a silver lining I’d rather not face, I imagine the current economic climate may result in more dads with time to get involved with school. This is likely a good time to add some effort around attracting and welcoming dads.

Thought I’d take a minute to recommend our newest tool.  It’s called “Parent Express Email” (we’ve been calling it PEX around the office), and I think you’re going to find it very, very helpful.

Basically, it’s a very simple (and free) tool for sending professional-looking emails to your parents.  (If you want to jump ahead to the tool without reading my thoughts… you can check out Parent Express Email here.  I’ll only be a little bit hurt. )

For years now, I’ve been very conservative about PTOs and email.  But I think the time is finally right for nearly all groups to take the plunge in a big way.  I wrote a column on this general topic of PTOs getting greener in our January issue. (more…)

Over the ten years, we’ve been tracking PTO and PTA embezzle stories, two things have been true:  1) they just don’t seem to ever go completely away; and 2) there have been several periods where the volume seems to pick up markedly.  Sadly, I think we’re in one of those up-cycles now.  (Guess we should call it a down-cycle.

Here’s a bunch more:

Massachusetts town uncovers 4 cases.

Illinois HSA victimized.

As always, here’s our feature on preventing theft in your PTO or PTA group.  These basics steps are worthwhile. Please.

I always find Lisa Belkin’s pieces on parenting and school interesting, and the discussions that follow are almost always lively and thoughful, too.  Good stuff.

Here’s another example, as Lisa explores an uptrend in Dads getting invovled with PTAs and PTOs. 

(Side note: flying around the web, it seems clear that the National PTA has their PR staff or PR firm pushing this story hard ahead of their new male president elect’s upcoming elevation to the top job. Good story, but PTOs have had a male leading the national resource for about 10 years now. )

Back to Lisa’s story, I do think the research that shows just how important involvement is is getting spread more broadly than ever.  And that dads are listening.  I’d also submit that the current economic troubles will actually further the trend, as more dads are home these days (not by choice) than in boom times.

My column on how best to engage dads and get them involved is here. 

Embezzle cases  — like this $10k case in Connecticut – drive me crazy for many reasons:

1. They’re preventable with some basic checks and balances.
2. It’s the worst kind of theft, stealing playgrounds and field trips and classroom supplies from kids
3. (As the comments on that above-linked article show) they invite the worst kind of suspicions and chatter about the good work of PTOs and PTAs.

New Year’s Resolutions: don’t think this can’t happen at your school and don’t let this happen at your school.  And for good measure, get the modestly-priced PTO insurance that protects you even more.