PTO Today

Entertainment Publications, LLC, which most of us know as the company that sold the chunky Entertainment coupon books, surprised many parent groups last week when it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The company is owned by MH Equity Partners, an Indianapolis-based investment firm that according to a March 14 report in the Indianapolis Business Journal has had its own financial difficulties. The Journal reported that MH Equity’s portfolio has lost nearly 70 percent of its value, and a rift developed that resulted in the dismissal of one of its two founding partners.

Entertainment Publications’ Chapter 7 voluntary petition was filed on March 12 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the District of Delaware.  A Chapter 7 filing means a liquidation of the business, with assets sold to pay off creditors. Entertainment Publications referred questions to an attorney, who could not be reached for comment.

The company’s website indicates that the coupon books are still available for sale. (See screenshot of Entertainment Publications’ homepage, right.) However, it’s not yet clear what recourse will be available to PTOs or PTAs with pending orders.

When news of the shutdown broke last week, we heard from one group leader who told us his group would be out $3,000 because of the sudden closure. Another parent group leader reported on our Facebook page discussion that she had received an email from the company to set up a meeting on the same day it officially filed for bankruptcy. Yet another leader said she tried to contact her rep by email last week and received a bounce-back.

When the company filed for Chapter 7, it did so with a motion to extend the deadline to file related schedules and information to the court.

In the meantime, the court has set a meeting with Entertainment Publications’ creditors for April 8. The company submitted a 65-page list of creditors with its bankruptcy filing.

The Entertainment Book company was founded in 1962. In recent months, it had been working with partners to go digital with its coupon offerings.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting deaths, we at first were stunned and speechless. Then, many in the PTOs community started doing what they so often do—looking for ways to help.

Here are some suggestions for helping the families of Newtown, Conn., as well as your own communities.

1. Contact your school administration to see how you can assist their efforts in working with your school community. PTOs and PTAs are in a special position to help because they know how to organize and reach out to families. The administration may need help in disseminating school safety information and reminders about such procedures as lockdown drills. Find out if the school principal would like you to get this info out on your own channels such as your newsletter, as well as your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

2. Reach out to parents in your community (you may already be hearing from them) to see if there is interest in holding a collection or somehow honoring the children and adults from the Sandy Hook community. Line up to your go-to people who can get things done quickly and see if you can do a holiday collection.

There are several organizations in Newtown, Conn., that are accepting donations to help the victims’ families, including Newtown Youth and Family Services, which can be reached at 203-426-8103. Another group accepting donations is the Newtown Parent Connection, Inc., which you can reach at or 203-270-1600.

Also, this article from the West Hartford News has additional information on how and what to donate.

3. Consider organizing a quick project to express appreciation and thanks to teachers and staff at school. You were likely going to do something like this anyway (or maybe already have). But simple and brief expressions of caring will have such special meaning now.

We have many gift ideas on our File Exchange for teacher appreciation that could make for sweet and simple holiday gifts. Also, this article provides several suggestions about how to show teachers how much they mean to you.

4. Gather resources on helping kids and families cope with tragic news. Many organizations are releasing information on how to talk to kids that would be useful to your families. School Family columnist Livia McCoy, a teacher who works with children with learning disabilities, says children—and adults—will process this tragedy in different ways.

Here are some other resources that offer good suggestions:

• How To Talk to Children About Violence Against Children
• Talking To Kids About Scary Things

5. After the holidays, consider a community service or outreach program to add to your winter and spring calendars. Your community may be feeling helpless right now in the face of such horrible sadness and doing something—taking action to help others—will help your community heal as well. These articles have several ideas for projects:

• Community Service: Paying It Forward With Good Works
• Community Service Projects That Raise Social Awareness

6. Finally, just be available to families as needed. Do you have a meeting before the end of the year? Scrap the usual agenda if it makes sense and just let people talk. Giving parents and kids a sense of connection is perhaps the best thing any of us can do right now.

Update:  Check out our new blogpost with additional resources for helping the Sandy Hook community here . 

Hurricane Sandy clobbered St. Rose Grammar School in Belmar, N.J., just as it did so many other homes, schools, and businesses along the Eastern seaboard.

At St. Rose, the PTO was getting ready for its big fundraiser, an auction that was scheduled to take place four days after the storm hit. Most of the auction work was done, and then Sandy’s floods came, destroying the gift baskets that had been so carefully assembled.

News Photo of Belmar, N.J.

But something pretty amazing is happening now. The PTO reached out for help on social media channels and got a tremendous response. The group posted on our Facebook page and now many PTO leaders are offering to assist St. Rose’s PTO so it can hold its auction early next year.

Just another example of the kindness and generosity we so often see in this PTO community—you certainly have each other’s backs!

We were also reminded this week of how determined PTOs can be. Just the other day, we heard about a PTO in Point Pleasant, N.J., a community near St. Rose. In this case, the G. Harold Antrim Elementary PTO had to cancel its holiday tour event. Turns out, many of the local businesses that would have participated in the tour were devastated by Hurricane Sandy. But this PTO dug its heels in and said that it would still hold a raffle, which has traditionally been part of this event.

If you hear of other stories about PTOs in need of help, please let us know. We posted an item on our message boards about the St. Rose PTO plight. The link is here. If anyone wants to share information about PTOs impacted by the hurricane, feel free to post about it here.

This is a safe assumption: If you are willing to dress up in a duck suit to help at your child’s school, then you’ve got spunk.

So, let’s just say that Nydia Villafane has some serious spunk! A mother of three, full-time working mom, and all-around helper, Villafane is the latest recipient of the SBLI Superstar Volunteers Program.

Villafane didn’t ease into volunteering but instead jumped right in when her daughter started kindergarten. She pitches in wherever there’s a need, from handling Box Tops collections to face painting at the annual Santa breakfast. And, yes, she was even willing to wear a duck suit to sell tickets for an annual local charity event.

Villafane’s selection has the distinction of kicking off the second year of the SBLI Superstar Volunteers program, a team effort of PTO Today and SBLI (The Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts). The program, which began in January 2012, gives well-deserved national recognition to school volunteers who are nominated by their peers. We profile these superstars on our site and the SBLI site, and SBLI donates $500 to each superstar’s school!

In its first year, the SBLI Superstar Volunteers program recognized 18 volunteers from a huge number of nominations. You can read more about the 2011-2012 winners here. Because the program has been so popular, SBLI and PTO Today decided to extend the program for another year! An additional nine will be selected in the program’s second year and each will receive $500 for his or her school.

So, keep sending in nominations and letting us know about the great volunteers at your schools! We believe stories like Nydia’s inspire everyone and show how volunteering really does make a difference!

Is your group reaching out to parents and conducting PTO business online? If not, it’s time.

A few things we’ve observed lately:

• As this school year is starting up, we’re hearing more and more about groups launching Facebook pages and we’re seeing more Tweets going out under hash tags like #ptomeeting.

• A report released late last month by the National School Public Relations Association shows just how important online communication is to parents. When this group polled parents on how they wanted to receive school information, the top five answers were: email, online parent portal, e-newsletters, school and district website, and the telephone.

• And then I happened to attend the PTO meeting this week at my children’s school at which the principal gave a presentation on the different technologies the school is implementing to share information about events, kid’s grades, and classroom content. There have already been some “firsts’’ this school year. For instance, the school did not send home paper copies of the kids’ schedules.

There’s no one bombshell here. But, when you put it all together, it points to a significant shift that we’ve been observing for some time. Parents will soon be able to get pretty much all the school information they need online, not just about their own child, but about the school community overall.

Essentially, parents will soon be “living’’ online when it comes to all things related to school if they aren’t doing so already. So, they are going to want to find you there, too.

It might mean more active outreach through email or providing parents with online forums to exchange information. It really depends on your community. As an example, Joe Mazza, principal at Knapp Elementary School in Lansdale, Penn., recently related a story about collaborating with the Home and School Association to put together a back-to-school newsletter. It took about two weeks and all communication between Mazza and the board was conducted via Twitter, Mazza says.

Also, the parent group at Knapp has hosted meetings in which participants can log in from home and type their questions and comments, which are then projected onto a large screen at the meeting.

“Once you get people using it—all these teachers and parents—think about the possibility for a connected culture and what it can do for engagement,’’ Mazza says. “It puts everything together at your fingertips.”

So, are you ready? Some resources to consider:

• Looking for ways to help bring parents and teachers together online? Take a look at TeacherLists.com, our sister site that provides an easy way for teachers to share their classroom supply and wish lists to parents. Launched in mid 2012, TeacherLists already has 100,000 classrooms participating.

• Wondering how to use these different communications channels appropriately? Looking for best practices? Check out our E-Communications Handbook for Parent Groups, which you can download from our File Exchange.

• Aren’t really into Twitter yet? No shame. Here’s a basic primer on Twitter that we published a while back that covers all the territory you need to know.

• Need information on email? Take a look at our Parent Express Email tool. It’s free! And it’s a great way to manage your parent email network.

Judging by sales numbers, at least, the iPad is now the technology to have in schools. Apple sold more than one million to the U.S. education market in the third quarter of its current fiscal year alone. Many PTOs and PTAs are taking out their checkbooks for these hand-held devices, so, should you?

These tablets definitely add to a classroom with their array of educational apps and easy to use video, photo, and music functions. But it’s still important for parent groups get answers to some key questions before they proceed.

What will the school do with them?
“You want to make sure you don’t fall into the trap where there’s no plan in place of how it’s going to be used,’’ says Eric Sheninger, principal at New Milford High School in New Milford, N.J. and a social media blogger and author.

Instead of getting dazzled by the iPad’s potential, check with your administration and talk to the school’s technology specialist to figure out if there is a need for iPads. Ask how they envision these tablets being used in the classroom and look for specifics in their answers.

Who will take care of them?
Find out if your school’s technology team has the bandwidth, as techies say, to handle supporting a new device. The iPad may be known for ease-of-use, but there are bound to be technical issues, even on small matters such as charging the battery, for which students and teachers will need help.

Where’s the money coming from?
Evaluate how to best fund an iPad purchase, keeping in mind they aren’t cheap and Apple doesn’t haggle, although it does provide educational discounts. Currently, iPads range from $400 to more than $800 per device.

Karen Weaver, a board member of the PTA at Redding Elementary in Redding, Conn., says her group held a dedicated fundraising effort last year that included a challenge grant. She and her husband matched the first $1,000 raised with an in-kind donation. Also, the local education foundation donated $500.

The PTA also did a companion Spirit Wear fundraiser, creating an “exclusive’’ Redding tie-dyed T-shirt, that raised $3,000 for the iPad fund. In total, the group raised $9,000 and purchased 22 iPads.

 Who should make the purchase?
Parent groups should check with their school or district, because many have specific guidelines on technology purchases. In some school districts, technology purchases are required to go through the central office.

In the case of the Redding PTA, it opted to make the purchases through Apple’s education group and received a 5% discount on each bundle of 10 it purchased.

Other parent groups find donating money for iPad purchases makes more sense. That’s how the District 67 PTA in Morton Grove, Ill., handled it. This parent group, which represents both the Hynes Elementary and Golf Middle Schools, donated $23,000 last year for iPads.

It decided to donate the money rather than make the purchase because the school would get a better deal by not paying sales tax, says Chris Hoffman, PTA president.  “Also, we decided it made more sense for the technology person to order it,’’ Hoffman adds. “We might not have known exactly what to order.’’

We know back-to-school time can be wacky with so much to do, so here’s one way to make it less hectic: Help your teachers get their class supply and wish lists online at TeacherLists.com

This could make for a great summer project and you’d be helping your teachers join a rapidly growing group! Since TeacherLists.com was launched just 2 months ago, more than 20,000 lists—representing 50,000 classrooms—have gone online!

TeacherLists.com is a free, easy-to-use online site where teachers create and maintain their lists for both classroom supplies—all the stuff kids need throughout the year—as well as their wish lists. There’s also a “specialty teacher resources” list that teachers can create for harder-to-find items like bulletin board supplies and curriculum materials. The lists are shared with parents who can then access them at their convenience, including from a smartphone while shopping.

TeacherLists.com ends the hassles that both teachers and parents have long experienced from old-fashioned lists. Teachers no longer need to recreate lists year after year and parents no longer need to hunt down lists their kids have lost or forgotten to bring home.

As an added incentive to teachers and schools, we’ve been giving away lots of prizes, including iPads, free school supplies, and gift cards just for getting lists online. For instance, schools can qualify to win more than $300 in school supplies from brands like Bounty and Puffs and a vinyl “Our School Rocks!” banner if they get all their teachers’ lists online. Read more about our prizes here.

Here’s another example of how easy it is to win prizes: If a teacher creates a list with any Elmer’s product on it, he or she automatically gets two free Elmer’s glue sticks for the classroom.

So, reach out to your teachers this summer and help them get on board with TeacherLists.com. If you are just getting started, order our free School Kickoff Kit here.  You’ll get a quick guide to TeacherLists.com as well as a poster and flyers to get the word out at your school.

If you need any assistance with creating or publishing teachers’ lists, we are here to give you a hand – we can even help you get your school’s lists online! Just check out our At Your Service page

For some reason, the idea that fundraising (parents and others providing extras for schools) is harmful for schools has gotten more traction than usual lately.  Like a snowball rolling down a hill, the concept seems to be gaining momentum with each new article.

It’s not a new idea.  Heck, we wrote a feature about how PTOs should be spending their money back in March, 2002 and for years we’ve been spotlighting fundraising issues such as how more fortunate groups partner with less fortunate parent groups. One example is this story, “PTOs helping PTOs,’’ which we first published in March, 2003.

But this New York Times story from June 1, 2012, with the eye-catching title, “Way Beyond Bake Sales: The $1 Million PTA”, along with follow-ups, such as this blog pointing out inequities in fundraising in New York City Schools, as well as a www.thespec.com series on inequities in Canadian schools, have all received outsized attention in the past month alone.  Just last week, I caught this story about a controversy that erupted in a Long Island (NY) school district over a donation of 3O new iPads.

But, penned by writers with little or no experience with the nuances of schools and school fundraising, the articles frequently miss essential points and almost make it seem like those who are working so hard for local schools are somehow part of the problem.  A few points from an alternative view:

1. We can’t let this discussion be framed by what happens in Manhattan. The Manhattan economy and culture is just a tad bit different than most of the rest of the country.  There are more than 80,000 K-8 schools in the country, and the concept of a million-dollar PTA is comically foreign to the vast majority of them. Much more typically, we are talking about groups raising $30,000 and $50,000 per year (at financially successful PTOs and PTAs) and $4,000 or $6,000 at financially struggling PTOs and PTAs.
2. Parents and community supporters who dig deep and support their schools – yes, with dollars, sometimes – are doing a very good thing.  They could put their dollars and their volunteer time somewhere else, but they choose to support schools.  These folks should be celebrated and held up as examples.
3. This concept that all school fundraising dollars should be pooled and shared equally sounds nice, but will inevitably yield fewer dollars. And that’s a bad thing.  That’s fewer field trips and fewer playgrounds and fewer teachers supported and fewer learning supplies. It’s a fundraising fact that the closer a giver is to a cause, the more likely he or she is to give and the more dollars he or she is likely to give.  The Cancer Society raises research dollars most effectively from families that have been touched by cancer and the American Heart Association does likewise from those who’ve experienced the pain of losing someone to cardiac problems.  Is it unfair if the Cancer Society raises more dollars than the American Heart Association?  If we tried to pool all medical fundraising so that all diseases were supported equally, there would inevitably be fewer total dollars raised for important research. That’s a bad thing.
4. I couldn’t believe more strongly in funding our schools well.  I believe the government has a responsibility as well as an economic incentive to educate our children, all of our children. But I also think it’s very important to point out that one school having more doesn’t make another school have less.  If there are two schools next to one another that are completely equal in every way, and –one day – the first school gets five new computers, the second school doesn’t become worse. The donor of those five computers did a good thing for one school.  Period.  He or she didn’t do harm to the second school.It makes little sense to make all schools less well off in order to keep the resource gap to an absolute minimum.  Making that – minimizing the resource gap — the priority is a recipe for mediocrity, at best, for all.  I’d personally rather we work our tails off to make every school – one-by-one – as great as it can be, celebrating (and thanking our stars for) those that get it right or get lucky or have resources, and continuing to fight for and advocate for (and even fundraise for) those that need more.

There are lots of challenges facing our schools. but hard-working and committed volunteers is not one of those problems. I work every day with committed volunteers who give their time, their passion, a good number of tears, tons of sweat and occasionally their dollars to schools. Do we really think that limiting those folks is the recipe for *better* schools?

Let’s be careful who and what we paint as the villains when it comes to the struggles too many of our schools face.

The school year may be winding down, but you still have a chance to do something big for your school! You can help it win great prizes by signing up for the Avery Give Back to Schools promotion. All you need to do is sign up your school on the Avery site, and then encourage your school community—parents, teachers, friends, and neighbors—to vote daily for your school between now and September 14, 2012.

You’ll want to get as many votes as possible for your school because the top five vote getters will receive:

• 25,000 Box Tops for Education Coupons

• $10,000 worth of Avery school supplies

• $1,000 in gift cards.

Betting your school could make good use of that!

As part of the contest, the 25 runner-up schools will each receive 10,000 Box Tops for Education coupons.

In addition, Avery also will select 10 random schools with more than 100 votes and they each will get 5,000 Box Tops for Education coupons.

So, check out the Avery web site and sign up now! This could be a great summer project for a volunteer who could head up a “get the word out’’ effort and send reminders to families and friends to keep voting every day. You’ll find a Top Schools list on the Give Back to Schools page where you can see how your school ranks. Avery has tips and promotional materials, including a flyer and banners, to help get the word out to your school community. Check out the tips here.

Also, the company has a helpful FAQ section if you need additional information on the Give Back to Schools program.

This is the third year Avery has run the Give Back to Schools promotion and last year thousands of schools participated. Altogether, it will give away 500,000 Box Tops coupons, $50,000 worth of Avery school supplies and $5,000 in gift cards in the 2012 program.

*Box Tops for Education and associated words and designs are trademarks of General Mills, used under license. ©2012 General Mills

When a story broke this week about strict nutritional guidelines possibly being enforced in Massachusetts, a good deal of the coverage focused on the end of bake sales as we know them and the harm it would cause parent groups that rely on them to raise money for schools.

One Massachusetts State Representative was quoted in a Boston Globe story saying the bakery ban seemed “to go way too far’’ and added,  “I think we’ll hear from every parent-teacher organization. I didn’t say this on the floor, but what are they going to sell, carrot sticks?’’

This lawmaker wasn’t the only one expressing this opinion, and while we appreciate the concern for PTOs, there’s something here that is off key.  It’s the idea that PTOs are almost synonymous with bake sales or that they would be lost without them (selling carrots, of all things).

What we see, everyday, are PTOs and PTAs doing amazing work and running programs and events that are complex and often raise substantial funds for schools.  There’s no question parent groups would feel the effects of a ban on bake sales, but these groups are about so much more than this one issue.

We know of PTOs and PTAs that organize for months to hold elaborate auctions. These projects often resemble the running of a small business, requiring public relations, budgeting, sales, and event and sponsor management. Check out our Ultimate Donation List forum on the PTO Today Message Boards and check into some of these conversations. One group recently outlined how it raised $135,000.

But this isn’t just about the significant financial contributions PTOs make. More importantly, it’s about the integral role these groups play in school communities. Research shows the more engaged parents are in their child’s education, the more successful the child will be in school. It helps them academically, emotionally and socially. The PTOs are on the front lines in this effort and, year after year, they work to build a sense of community and foster involvement.

How about the parent group that took over running many aspects of the school to save it from closing? Or what about the groups that create great community service programs? Still others work to raise literacy scores and help build community in times of severe economic stress.

This isn’t about cookies or cakes, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

So, we’re against a bake sale ban — we think parents, and local schools, are perfectly capable of making their own decisions on what makes sense for their community. But we also know that banning cookies and cakes isn’t going to stop PTOs and PTAs or the important work they do.