Michelle B.-

Sorry, but I'm a little confused and this is an interesting concept to me. Does your public school district still have a paid Parent Involvement Coordinator? What state are you in?

Our district has a paid Volunteer Coordinator for the district, but she is not involved with lending any assistance to PTOs/PTAs. She handles most of the background checks for volunteers to the schools and sends information to the volunteer coordinators (not-paid positions) of each of the schools in the district about volunteers that register and where they might want to be placed if they don't specify a certain school.

I can't imagine that our district's Volunteer Coordinator would also be able to take on the work of assisting the district's PTOs/PTAs, although I think it is a very interesting concept. We are constantly having budget cuts and there isn't enough money in our district to have our district Volunteer Coordinator, or any other paid position, assisting PTO/PTAs.

I've never heard of any of our district's PTOs/PTAS attempting to form some type of council within the district. We have almost 30 elementary schools in our district, and I think it would be difficult to form any type of council with all of them. Many of the elementary's PTOs/PTAs have a difficult time even getting a PTO/PTA rep. to attend the District Advisory Board meetings. These DAB meetings have little to do with anything that involves the PTOs/PTAs, although occasionally a subject will come up that falls under the category of parent-teacher groups. organizations of the school.

How many schools are represented by your PTA council?

Honestly, I think that the position our school district has (this is the first year it has been a DISTRICT position, prior it was in the Education Collaborative) of the Parent Involvement Coordinator. Our PTA representatives worked really hard on the Parent Involvement policy and this includes this position. I think all school districts should have this. Her job is to be a liason and assist all parent groups. The person in that position also holds a spot on the state PTA board. I know that she assists many of the PTOs here and occasionally a PTA (I get those phone calls most of the time) but it should be a position in all districts.

Don't know. Casey? Many PTA councils charge by the member, akin to the way state and national charges. So it might be: $1.75 per member for national, $2 per member for state and $0.75 per member for council.

Tim

Actually, we do charge just $50 per group in our council. What are they charging?

Hi MichelleB -

I think you're reading my response wrong.

Two things:

1. I have no problem with the groups who decided to stay PTA or the groups who decided to leave. They looked at their options and about half decide to stay PTA and about half decided to go PTO. Seems to me like it was a nice eyes-open process and I wish all the groups the best.

In fact, when I spoke to this council, my parting words -- because things were fairly contentious -- were: "Whichever way you go -- and I can see the cases for both sides -- just do it quickly, get past this difficulty, and then get back to the real work here of helping your schools and the kids in them."

So I'm happy for all the groups down there, not just the staying-PTAs or the going-PTOs. Hope they all focus on doing great work.

2. This is not a huge district geographicaly and there are already natural connections between the groups. It's basically a Council of one school district, just happens to be a lot of schools in this district. So it's not apples-to-apples to your situation.

And I suppose the Council (or call it something else, say "Northeast President's Committee") *could* charge a minor dues to all groups that want to be involved just in Council. Wouldn't have to do it per member, could do, say, $50 per group and that could cover refreshments and photocopies..

The PTAs could pay their local, state and national dues as they due now and all those groups (PTOs and PTAs) that want to be part of the president's committee could just pay the $50.

I'm just throwing it out there....this or some other creative, cooperative idea might be worth exploring as a best solution for all the schools involved.

I do think that the "if you don't want to play exactly our way, then we're taking our ball and going home" mentality helps no one.

Interesting thought Tim but honestly not realistic. First off, in our council, dues are needed. Putting together the trainings isn't the biggest thing but rather, there is a cost to putting it together. That is unless you would expect volunteers like myself to pay for the copies that have to be run, folders, and while I'd be happy to be able to personally afford the gas to travel two hours to one of the schools in our region, I can't really afford it.
Plus, when they can't afford convention, we send them. Just a minute example of SOME of the costs incurred to help the PTAs in my area.
Then there is the uniformity. PTAs have a certain amount of uniformity. When a President calls needing help with something, it may not pertain to a PTO. Of course, again, as a volunteer on the council, I could spend even more time understanding the independent groups and all of the possibilities that come with it. Time with my family isn't really that important right?
Of course, in my district, we could just eliminate the Parent Facilitator's job too. We fought for years to have it become a district position in order to be able to help ALL groups and

be the "system" through which your super and administration connect with the organized parent groups.

but we know that a volunteer would be able to do a much better job right?
Just seems like you don't really understand the true function of a PTA council all the way around.
Realistically, what would have happened with the council is that the council would still exist. IT was really just a mass exodus organized by a few parents that obviously from the vote, didn't represent the whole of the members. Seems like they did the math and found the value. Shouldn't you rather be happy that they decided it worked for them???