Texas PTA Challenges
April 8th, 2009 by Tim SullivanThis Dallas feature takes an interesting look at Texas state PTA membership and parent volunteering trends in the Lone Star State. Looks like Texas PTA membership is down 200,000 in last 15 years or so at a time when Texas student enrolment is up by 1 million or so. I was surprised to see this, as Texas PTA has traditionally been one of the strongest and most aggressive state PTAs on membership development.
One missing piece from the article is the possibility that the PTA membership decline does not necessarily mean a decline in parent volunteering as a whole. If an existing PTA disbands and becomes a PTO (as has happened quite a bit across the country), PTA membership goes down but parent volunteering does not. Not sure if that’s a cause of the Texas numbers per se, but certainly a possibility.
Do think the article captures an interesting phenomenon that I’m sure *is*a factor in Texas. Many immigrant parents do not think of parent involvement in same ways that many long-time citizens may think of as “traditional”. That’s a definite challenge for all schools and parent groups. Some thoughts on that in this feature story on engaging immigrant parents.
Interested in your thoughts on the Texas PTA membership story as well as your own creative solutions for connecting with multi-cultural parents.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
I think the Texas PTA has turned off a lot of schools. Our school converted to PTO and now we have more parent participation. Parents at our school are more interested in volunteering vs. being so focused on PTA bylaws. We also like being able to keep the dues and utilize that money in our budget. I’ve heard the dues are now $4 a student. That is way too much! While some of the training that is offered is helpful, we discovered that we often would receive inconsistent information. For example the President would attend one meeting and the Treasurer would attend another meeting. Then when we came our and compared notes, they were contradictory. With the internet and help of your website converting to a PTO was a no brainer. Our only regret….we wished we would have converted sooner!
May 1st, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Was it easy to transfer from a pta to pto?