PTO Today

Before you make definitive plans for next year’s PTO or PTA calendar, have you sat down with your principal and asked about her top two or three priorities for next year? If not — have that conversation first.

Parent involvement and family and volunteer activities of all kinds are great. But parent involvement that brings parents into discussions about and solutions for key school challenges is the most powerful. Perhaps reading scores are a struggle. If so, a Family Reading Night (with collaboration from your reading staff) might be a better fit than the annual Science Night. Or you could add a book swap and book club to the school calendar. Or volunteer parent readers and tutors. You get the idea.

The same kind of thinking and collaboration can apply to all kinds of priorities, but only if you have that conversation with your principal and/or staff. The challenges might be related to academics, social skills, safety, physical fitness, or something else. Working together with school staff, you can multiply your impact.

Here are a few more links on that kind of collaboration:

• Make It an A+ Year
• Help Build Student Achievement
• Make the Principal Your Partner

P.S. — Speaking of reading, I wanted to give you a heads up about a fun summer reading list sweepstakes from our sister site, SchoolFamily.com. Head over to the SchoolFamily Facebook page and share your favorite children’s book for a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card. Good luck!

If you have a great principal who supports your efforts, take every chance you get to let your whole school community know that. In your newsletter, at your events, even in personal conversations, publicize your principal’s support and how much your group appreciates that support. It’s well worth it.

If you have a principal who often gets in your way or frustrates you, you’ll actually do well to make him or her a hero as much as you can, too. It’s the old “kill ‘em with kindness” theory, and it works well here. If your principal comes to see your group as an asset or an ally, and — perhaps especially — if you share credit with the principal for your own victories, then cooperation and support will follow. This little bit of sweet talk can really work if the goal is to grow involvement and make your school thrive.

We have several articles on ptotoday.com about the care and feeding of principals:

• Get the Principal on Your Side
• Make the Principal Your Partner
• What Principals Fear From Parent Groups

Good luck!

You work hard to raise money for your kids’ school, so when disputes about how to spend that money arise, it’s extremely disconcerting. Pop over to the Teachers/Principal Forum on our message boards and you’ll see that it’s also pretty common for parent groups and principals to disagree. In this video blog, Tim offers some advice on what to do when money fights with your principal arise.

Here are some helpful links that relate to Tim’s talk:

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/209-make-the-principal-your-partner

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/167-whose-rules-school-or-pto

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/176-negotiating-with-the-principal

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/111-get-the-principal-on-your-side

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/382-make-peace-with-the-principal

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/184-dealing-with-disagreements

Educating kids is a big job. It takes help from parents, community groups, and even business partners. As director of the National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University, Joyce Epstein helps schools partner with all these groups to help students succeed. One of her top priorities is promoting productive family involvement.

NNPS draws upon decades of research on parent involvement and school improvement to help schools and their partners focus their efforts on what works best. That means making sure everything they do helps schools reach their goals. We talked with Joyce to find out how parent groups fit into the picture.

What is your message for parent group leaders?

Have a conversation about “What is the goal of parent involvement?” Is it to involve parents for parent involvement’s sake, or is it to help youngsters do better in school? We have learned that if it isn’t about the students’ success, then principals and superintendents and community leaders consider family involvement “fluff.” If it is about student success and if it’s in tune with what the teachers are working hard on every day, then family and community involvement is considered central to the success of school improvement goals.

What are some ways PTOs can contribute to student success?

Parent groups can help by creating a welcoming feeling at school. For example, the PTO might sponsor a picnic before school opens to help all families feel that they are partners with the teachers for the new school year. Other parent groups have held a drive-through breakfast to offer parents coffee and a “thank you” for what they’re doing to support their children as students in school. When there’s a good climate of partnerships at a school, it’s more likely that other activities that focus on student learning goals will occur.

We also want everyone to be working on activities that will link family and community involvement to student results and good outcomes. PTAs and PTOs can make sure that any curriculum-related programs that they have are tied to what teachers are working on with students in their classrooms. If the parent group recruits volunteers for a “reading buddy” program, for example, it’s important to make sure that what they do links to what the teachers need the students to practice. Otherwise, the program may involve parents as volunteers but may not really help the kids improve their reading skills or attitudes.

What is your advice for PTO leaders who want to increase parent involvement?

Talk with the principal about how the group’s activities can be linked to what the staff is trying to achieve with the school improvement plan. And keep the focus on student success. Also, we would like the PTO or PTA to let the principal know that NNPS can be a resource to the school (and to the district) to provide ongoing guidance for strong and sustainable partnership programs.

—Emily Graham

After a decade of talking with PTO and PTA leaders on the phone, in person, and through our online message boards, we’ve found that one of the most common themes is how to deal with principal problems. Can the principal decide what kind of events we run? What if she gets in our way? Who has final say over fundraising and finances?

My latest video blog on who’s the boss of the PTO covers the short answer — if your parent group is independent from the school, then technically the principal does not control these decisions — and also why this isn’t really the right answer. A strong, successful parent group needs cooperation and support from the principal; you aren’t likely to get either of those if you’re fighting over territory.

So here’s this week’s tip: Instead of challenging the principal’s authority, find ways to work together. Start by thinking about concerns she might have, and what you and your fellow PTO leaders can do about them. Is the principal worried about embezzlement? Wow her with the financial controls your group uses. Did previous PTO boards plan activities that interfered with classroom time? Might make sense to check dates with teachers before printing up flyers. (Read ”Real Disputes With the Principal’‘ to see how several parent groups solved their own disagreements.)

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge; what does matter is that your PTO is doing great work for the kids and making the school a better place. That’s also the best foundation for building a strong principal-PTO partnership.

Who decides how our PTO money is spent? How do I deal with a controlling principal? Should the principal have the final say on what goes into our newsletter? We get questions like these — and many more — on our site all the time. The basic question is who’s the boss? This week Tim addresses this question in his video tutorial, where he talks about the importance of making the principal your partner.

What steps have you taken to make your principal your pal? Anyone have any stories about how they have successfully worked out differences between parent group and principal? Love to hear them!