Like many school groups, the Madison Elementary PTO in Mount Vernon, Wash., focuses on increasing parent involvement. Only for this group, the target often slips from view. Many of the parents are migrant farm workers from Mexico who follow the crops from Texas to Washington and back again. Half the children who start classes in the fall are gone before the year ends. Madison families are also the most impoverished in the district, with 90 percent of the school population qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Many parents do not speak English; they work long hours for little pay and aren’t available to volunteer in the schools. It would be a financial strain for them to donate food, supplies, money, or time.
In the face of such obstacles, few would blame the Madison PTO if it washed its hands of the whole business and walked away, or limped along with the annual catalog fundraiser and bingo game, as it did for years. But two years ago, a new group of parents came in, fueled by the considerable passion kindergarten parents can muster. Determined to enrich the school for the sake of their own children, they set about making it a better place for all students, teachers, and families.
“We had to reevaluate what we consider parent involvement. If someone can come to just one meeting a year, that’s success. Or if they can spend 15 minutes working on a project, that’s success,” says Madison PTO President Kelley Kirkpatrick-Berg.
Kirkpatrick-Berg and her husband, Eric Berg, nearly didn’t send their daughter Peri to Madison, a 480-student school. The high student turnover led to low standardized test scores and harmed the school’s reputation. But Principal Evelyn Morse convinced the family to give Madison a try.
Kirkpatrick-Berg attended her first PTO meeting, and within a few months had assumed the vacant secretarial position. The group’s activities that year consisted of a single bingo night, a magazine fundraiser, and a cookie dough fundraiser.
The following year, Kirkpatrick-Berg took over as president of the board. Two more newcomers, Stacey Frazzini and Melissa Kingma, assumed the roles of vice president and secretary. That’s when the magic happened. As when just the right mixture of ingredients combine to form something else entirely, the individual members of the Madison Elementary PTO clicked into a force much greater than the simple sum of its parts.
Right away, the group set three goals: Increase the $10,000 budget; show appreciation for the teachers and staff; and foster a greater sense of school community. The last goal, they hoped, would help them meet the first two. It would also be their most difficult task, given the language and cultural barriers and what Mount Vernon Schools Superintendent Carl Bruner says is a basic mistrust of public institutions among many of the migrant families.
The PTO figured it could lure parents into the life of the school through consistency and volume. Group leaders planned a family event for each month. If a parent couldn’t make it, there would always be another one coming up. Fundraising became another way to build community. Instead of limiting efforts to product sales, the group held a carnival that brought families together for a fun afternoon. “What we found in the end is they really intermingle,” Kirkpatrick-Berg says. “When you start increasing involvement, you get more money, and when you start getting money, you can do more activities that increase involvement.”
Breaking the Language Barrier
The Madison PTO is made up of white, English-speaking women, a considerable disadvantage considering that 80 percent of the school’s children are Hispanic. School policy requires written communications to parents be translated into Spanish. The PTO has taken that a step further by paying the school’s bilingual advocate to interpret each meeting. It also has its flyers and notices translated but stopped short of publishing a newsletter because of the cost. The board is taking a “one parent at a time” approach, reaching out when it can to individuals, even if it means doing so through the parent’s bilingual child. It also considers everything it does from the perspective of the Hispanic parents.
“Everything they do, from making decisions about the time of day to hold an activity, whether or not food is included, the cost of the activity, cultural sensitivities relative to activities, and the need for translators to be present, they truly attend to all of those details,” Bruner says. “So when they’re sitting down brainstorming about things to do, they have all of those considerations at the forefront of their discussions.”
Fewer Meetings, More Fun
Madison PTO meetings typically attracted about 10 parents each month. When the board examined why attendance was so low, they had to admit that the meetings were “mind-numbingly dull,” according to Kirkpatrick-Berg. They were also long, an unfortunate byproduct of the Spanish translation. After some soul-searching, the board concluded that PTO meetings were really not that critical to their overall vision of building a warm and embracing school community. They decided to cut back to meetings every other month.
Once they accepted that meetings would play only a bit part in their overall scheme to increase parent involvement, they became more carefree about their agendas. They gave each meeting a theme, starting with “PTO Is Fun,” during which everyone played icebreaker games and competed for prizes. The games were such a hit that the group now starts every meeting with “human bingo,” for which participants race against the clock to learn facts about one another. At another meeting during the year, the superintendent gave a “State of the Union” address. At the “Creative Kids” meeting, the student chorus entertained parents and other students read their creative writing.
At every meeting, Kirkpatrick-Berg awards raffle tickets to anyone who makes or seconds a motion or simply makes a great comment. At random times throughout the meetings, a raffle drawing is held. During the year, each themed meeting attracted a different set of parents, some of whom grew comfortable enough with the meetings to attend other ones. The average attendance grew to 40.
“The tone of the meetings changed from being formal, stuffy business meetings to being fun, but we still got the work done,” says Kirkpatrick-Berg.
Nurturing Teachers
Madison Elementary’s poor reputation affects teacher morale in a way that is heartbreaking to the parents who see up close how hard the staff works.
“It’s easy for faculty in a school like that to feel somewhat disconnected and disadvantaged themselves because they have a very difficult job,” Bruner says. “A hallmark of schools with high levels of poverty is that you have families who are kind of in transition, who are often looking for affordable housing, so there is a high turnover of students, which of course makes it even more difficult as a classroom teacher to run a classroom that’s cohesive, much less try to make sure all of the kids are caught up.”
The PTO voted to increase each teacher’s classroom stipend from $50 to $75. Teachers use the money to buy extras that aren’t included in the school budget, like boom boxes, craft items, and incentive prizes for students.
The PTO also created “room sponsors,” parents who are appointed to help teachers with class parties, bulletin boards, field trips, and other tasks.
At various times throughout the year, the PTO would bring surprises, including baked goodies and potluck meals, to the staff lounge. Then, for Teacher Appreciation Week in May, they sneaked into the lounge at night and transformed the room into a 1950s-style diner. For lunch, the PTO board grilled hamburgers, served french fries, and made milk shakes. They held a ’50s trivia contest, with the winner receiving a gift certificate. Instead of giving each teacher a small, inexpensive gift, the PTO decided to purchase two new microwave ovens and a case of popcorn for the lounge.
The teachers have matched the PTO’s enthusiasm. There’s always at least one staff member at an event, often more. Only two of the school’s 30 teachers didn’t participate in the carnival. And at the end of the year, the teachers showed their gratitude by getting together and holding a progressive dinner for the PTO board members. “It was the best night of my life. We had a great time,” Kirkpatrick-Berg remembers. “The staff has become our friends.”
Fundraising When Funds Are Scarce
Raising money has always been a challenge at Madison, where many parents work multiple jobs and struggle just to keep their families fed. The PTO’s main fundraiser has traditionally been a catalog sale. This year, they chose a company that offers two-thirds of its items for less than $10. At the kickoff, the PTO explained the importance of the fundraiser to the children to ensure that they—and their parents—understood how their participation would benefit the school. Profits, typically $4,500, rose to nearly $6,000.
Though the catalog fundraiser was a success, the group began looking for other ways to bring in money. They settled on a carnival with an around-the-world theme. The PTO advertised the carnival in town and sent flyers to the district’s other schools, hoping to attract people from outside the Madison community.
“I think a lot of schools will have to move in this direction as the rich/poor gap gets bigger. You have to look at the other stakeholders in this school. That’s your community. The kids all end up at the same high school, so if one student is failing, it will hurt your kids,” Kirkpatrick-Berg says. “That’s what it means to be a community. It doesn’t matter whether you have kids at Madison. They’re still your kids if you live in this town.”
The carnival featured a dunk tank, a jail, a bounce house, and games. Tickets were 25 cents each, and food was sold. The group netted about $2,000. More important, the event made people feel good.
“That was so much fun. Some of the teachers came up to me and said, ‘Wow, there are parents I didn’t imagine would ever come out and they were here with our children,’” PTO Treasurer Janet Lindsay says. “It isn’t all about money. It’s about bringing the family together.”
Family Event of the Month
Last fall, the PTO signaled its new emphasis on community-building with a back-to-school cookout for families. The next month, it held a Pumpkin Party featuring 200 donated pumpkins for families to decorate with paint, feathers, googly eyes, and glitter. The group created a photo backdrop with hay bales and a scarecrow where families could pose for $1 a picture. The pictures proved so successful that they offered the opportunity at four other activities.
Kirkpatrick-Berg’s favorite event of the year was Pajama Night. The PTO recruited a police officer, fire fighters (who arrived in their fire truck), and the public librarian to read bedtime stories. Parent Jim Catino, who works for a nearby casino, used his connections to supply a dinner of strawberry waffles and sausage. Area businesses donated raffle prizes. People so enjoyed themselves that even when the popcorn machine blew a circuit breaker, adding an unintentional realism to the pajama party, people sat in the dark and continued with the fun.
Other monthly events included a family craft night, two bingo nights, a Cinco de Mayo celebration with Mexican food and traditional dances performed by students, and a dinner and ceremony to mark the restoration of a totem pole on school property.
But Wait, There’s More
As if the monthly events and fundraisers weren’t enough, the PTO hosts monthly scrapbooking nights in the school cafeteria for teachers and parents and created a Wednesday afternoon “club day,” during which parents share their hobbies and interests with students after school. Kirkpatrick-Berg, a former high school debater, started the Madison debate team while her husband leads the chess club. Parent Donnabell Lathrom teaches a hip-hop dance class. The PTO also donates $6 per student to defray the cost of field trips, brought the Pacific Science Center science van to the school, hosted a college funding night, sent 50 students on a “young authors” field trip where they worked on creative writing with professionals, and organized canned food drives and a winter clothing drive for the underprivileged.
Tapping Outside Resources
Though the members of the Madison Elementary PTO collectively generate enough energy to satisfy the needs of a small country, they realized they needed help to carry out all of their plans. They brought in high school Key Club students to play games and do activities with the children while parents attended PTO meetings. They also called upon that club and the high school basketball team to run carnival activities. The Madison Elementary Student Council spent weeks planning and implementing a cardboard-box maze, and the fifth- and sixth-graders helped with carnival decorations.
The board also saw the wisdom of tapping the knowledge, creativity, and talents of other parents. Kirkpatrick-Berg meets monthly with PTO leaders from other schools for moral support and idea exchanges. By the time the PTO carnival rolled around, she had established a strong enough relationship with the other groups that two of the PTO leaders showed up to work the event’s musical cakes activity.
Checking in on Their Goals
Throughout the year, the Madison PTO watched for signs that it was moving closer to its goals. Some of the indicators were subtle, like the sight of a non-English-speaker working a pizza table side by side with a parent volunteer who spoke no Spanish. Others were easier to measure. When the PTO put out a call for carnival supplies, flashlights, yarn, duct tape, and more than 2,000 balloons came flooding in.
“These are people new to this country and that’s the only way they can participate this year, by going out and buying a dozen balloons. That’s success,” Kirkpatrick-Berg says.
The carnival provided more evidence that a community of parents and teachers was taking hold at Madison Elementary. The PTO estimated it would need 90 volunteers to pull off the event. A group that generally had a tough time finding even five extra sets of hands in years past, the members wondered how they’d get all of the work done. It turned out that volunteers came out in force, including one family that had never helped before. Just as the decoration committee was ready to collapse from exhaustion, the parents showed up at the school, superhero-style. With their young son translating, the family asked how they could help. They worked all night hanging decorations.
With the 2004-2005 school year behind it, the Madison PTO is looking forward to continuing its progress. Superintendent Bruner expects they’ll do even better this year.
“All of our schools struggle to find ways to increase meaningful parent involvement; a school like Madison struggles even more,” he says. “Their parent group has just done a remarkable job of turning that around. They have single-handedly reenergized that parent community around Madison Elementary. Not only have they devoted a lot of time and positive energy and great organizational effort into doing some specific kinds of fundraisers, but they’ve been real thoughtful about how to structure activities so they can be more inclusive. It’s just remarkable what they’ve done. They are so committed to that elementary school that their enthusiasm seems infectious.”
When Kirkpatrick-Berg looks back at what the PTO has accomplished and looks toward the future, she remembers what brought the group to where it is in the first place.
“It is kind of a selfish thing. We want the best for our kids,” she says. “It just so happens that what’s the best for our kids is the best for all of the kids.”
Group at a Glance
Name: Madison Elementary PTO
Location: Mount Vernon, Wash.
Community: population 27,000; rural/suburban
School size: 484 students
Grades: K-6
Annual budget: $10,000
Typical meeting attendance: 40
5 Good Ideas From Madison PTOBuilding Attendance Bingo Drawings Snipping Away at Involvement Open Dates A Ticket To Participate |
