PTO Today

One PTA found a way to take the sting out of back-to-school shopping for families. The Reeves-Hinger Elementary PTA in Canyon, Texas, bought supplies for all the school’s students and had them set up on desks on the first day of school. The group spent $10,000 and purchased all but three items on each list. The preK-4 school has approximately 750 students. That’s a lot of no. 2 pencils!

The number of people who are purchasing products through school and youth fundraisers has dropped significantly in the past five years, according to a survey released in June by the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers. However, the 1,000 consumers surveyed expressed support for the fundraisers, indicating that the decline in fundraiser participation may be tied to the economic slowdown.

The top reason people didn’t support a fundraiser was that they weren’t asked, the survey found. Two-thirds of respondents said they hadn’t been asked to make a fundraising purchase between April 2010 and April 2011.

Telling people how the money raised by school and youth groups would be spent had a clear effect on consumers. More than one-third (37 percent) said they wouldn’t have made a purchase without knowing this, and 25 percent of people said they purchased more than originally planned.

A Florida PTO found a creative way to raise money and reinforce math skills at the same time. While walking through the hay maze built by the S.S. Dixon Primary PTO in Pace, students can use a handheld GPS and take measurements while trying to find a hidden package. The “Haystackular” hay maze is open during weekends in October. Teachers can also arrange field trips during the week.

Soon after her children started going to Van Bokkelen Elementary in Severn, Md., Rhonda Ulmer learned that the school might be taken over by the state because of poor academic performance. In 2004, when Ulmer was PTA president, she formed the Van Bokkelen Family Network to connect parents with resources to help stabilize their families, such as food assistance and GED classes. In the next few years, students’ test scores and parent involvement at Van Bokkelen improved and the school was taken off the takeover list.

Ulmer expanded on the idea of the Family Network by starting a nonprofit organization called the University for Parents, which provides educational resources and parenting classes (throughout) Maryland. She offers ideas on how parent groups can help families at home, and ultimately, help them get more connected to school.

What was your involvement strategy at Van Bokkelen?

First, I sent out a survey to families to determine what challenges parents were facing. Some of the barriers to involvement I discovered were everyday hardships such as housing, food, utility bills, and unstable family situations, and the fact that some parents had not pursued a higher education due to working demands to provide for their families.

Our PTA partnered with the local YWCA, set up GED classes for parents, and arranged childcare and bus
transportation.… We also started a partnership with the Maryland Food Bank, which helped launch Van Bokkelen’s School Pantry Program. We provided family food baskets to parents who volunteered at the school.

What tips would you suggest to PTO and PTA leaders to help parents become more connected at school?

Survey your parents to determine what programs are needed to help parents and families be successful.
Host a PTO/PTA program or event at a local library, faith-based organization, or community center.

Don’t forget about the needs of working and single parents. Maybe you can offer programs that include the entire family—online, in the evenings, or on the weekends.

Partner with the school and local organizations, and offer meeting times that coincide with other community events. This eliminates parents having to make repeated trips to the school during the course of a week.

Be culturally aware of the diversity in your school community. Be ready to provide programs that meet the needs of all parents and families.

—Patty Catalano

Does your parent group have anything planned for Earth Day? If not, think about borrowing one of these great ideas.

Eco-Fashion Show

Students modeled clothing they created from recycled materials at an environmental assembly organized by the PTA at Samuel Staples Elementary in Easton, Conn., for Earth Day 2010. The PTA’s Green Task Force planned the event, which included a student play about taking care of the earth.

Beach Cleanup

Blue Point (N.Y.) Elementary students spent a day at the shore with their families in September, but they were too busy picking up trash to lie on the sand. The PTA-sponsored cleanup, which took place at a local beach, was tied to the International Coastal Cleanup initiative. The group picked up 170 pounds of trash, including 1,373 cigarette butts and 215 bottles and cans.

It’s no surprise that parents often find it harder to volunteer at the middle school level than at their child’s elementary. Still, parents at a California school were taken aback when an employees union came out against a new volunteer program.

The nonprofit Healthy Community Consortium launched the pilot volunteer program at Petaluma (Calif.) Junior High School this fall. About 80 parents signed up to welcome students as they arrive on campus and monitor a playing field during lunch, among other tasks.

Volunteers were needed to fill some of the roles because budget cuts have resulted in numerous job cuts at the school, says HCC volunteer coordinator and school parent Lynn King. However, the fact that the program would use volunteers to help fill gaps created by staff layoffs led to opposition from the classified employees’ union, which represents clerical, custodial, maintenance, and other workers.

One point of contention was the use of volunteers in the library to assist the school librarian. A library aide had been employed at the school until funding was cut in the spring, King says.

“Our stand is you can’t have volunteers. They can’t do our work,” union president Loretta Kruusmagi told the Press Democrat newspaper.

District deputy superintendent Steve Bolman said the district is working with the union and the volunteers so that volunteers aren’t used for positions included in the classified bargaining unit.

King says the union opposition is an obstacle, but won’t mean the end of the pilot program. “Everybody acknowledges that when you have more caring adults around, kids do better,” she says. “We’re making sure the positions we come up with are okay with them.”

After piloting the program at Petaluma Junior High, HCC hopes to expand it to other middle schools and to high schools in the district.

You probably knew that getting involved in your child’s education can help his academic achievement, but did you know it could help improve his social skills, too? A study published in the May/June issue of the journal Child Development found that kids of highly involved parents had better social skills and fewer behavior problems at school than children whose parents were not as involved.

The study by University of Pittsburgh researchers looked at students in 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades. Those whose parents had above-average involvement at school got along better with their classmates and made fewer trips to the principal’s office.

One explanation for the improved behavior is that the more often parents visit or volunteer at school, the more opportunities they have to talk with teachers about their child’s behavior. As parents become better informed about their child’s social troubles at school, they can address the issues at home. Involved parents were also more likely to be aware of school and community resources that could benefit their child socially and academically.

—Emily Graham

Well, cold and flu season is upon us. In anticipation of the sniffles and coughs we’ve launched a new Healthy School Kids page with lots of practical tips, tools and insight on keeping kids healthy during the school year.

To take the sting out of the season we are running a blog give-away. How would you like to win* a gift certificate good towards a professional house cleaning and a gift pack chock full of Lysol cleaning products? Cool, right?!

Here’s how the blog give-away works:

• Tell us what steps your group is taking to help keep kids at your school healthy this year and you could win* this cool blog give-away! Just post your comment on our PTO Today Facebook page for a chance to win.

• If you’re not sure how to begin, just start with an old fashioned fill in the blank: Our parent group is keeping kids healthy this school year by ____________.

• Get posting, because this is the perfect giveaway package for your group to offer to busy parents at an upcoming auction or health and wellness event!

* The Healthy School Kids blog drawing runs from October 6th through October 20th, at 11pm EST. At the end of that time period all Facebook fans who wrote a healthy kids idea on our wall will be entered into a drawing to win a professional house cleaning gift certificate, and a gift pack full of Lysol cleaning products. One entry per person and one name will be drawn randomly from all the comments.

Disclosure: Lysol is a sponsor of the Healthy School Kids program.

UPDATE: October 21, 2010- The winner of the Healthy School Kids give-away is Jamie Anderson. Congrats Jamie! Thank you to everyone who participated and shared their tips. Be sure to visit our Healthy School Kids page to sign up to get in on FREE healthy school kids samples for you to share with your parents at school events, and to pick up some great tips.

Fairly soon, your group will be welcoming a whole new crop of parents to your school. Some small percentage of those parents will be excited to get involved with your group. How will you react to those parents?

Will you make it clear that their questions are tiresome? Will you hastily dismiss their “new” ideas (that you’ve had in the past) and discourage them?

I hope not, but that’s what a lot of us PTO and PTA old-timers tend to do (often unknowingly) when we first deal with these new parents. It’s a great way to turn off the fresh, enthusiastic volunteers you most need.

I tried to capture this dynamic — and also some of the mistakes that new parents make in jumping in too aggressively — in a column I wrote last year called “A Tale of Two Volunteers“. I think this is a great time of year to bring it back out. I hope you’ll share it with your fellow leaders as a reminder of the mistakes we should try to avoid this summer and next fall.

Take a look back at your just-ending PTO year. Do you have one really memorable event that went off great, one that people remember and that has become identified with your PTO or PTA group?

I call that a “signature event,” and I talked about why having a signature event is so important in a recent video blog entry.

These can really be anything, whether it’s the annual school fair with the fire trucks and antique car parade or the dinner dance gala that has become a highlight of the (adult) social calendar. The key question is this: Is the event becoming a well-known, looked-forward-to annual tradition?

If you have one of these, make it even better. If you don’t, work hard to get one. I can tell you with great confidence that one awesome event plus one good event is a way better recipe for PTO success than six just OK events. Success can help change your reputation in the school community, and successful events definitely attract the best volunteers.

Want a jump-start on creating your own signature event? You can start with one of our School Family Nights as a platform for making something really special. You can also get great ideas from our Facebook discussion on signature events that’s been going strong.