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PTAs go beyond bake sales, pep rallies

Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Naomi Brookner⁄The Gazette In preparation for the first day of school, Jerry Herbers, a member of the Sligo Creek Elementary School PTA, and his 9-year-old, Esther, a fourth-grader at the school, pull up weeds around the school’s sign on Saturday.

Similar efforts are common throughout eastern Montgomery County, as schools rely on PTAs to augment services and facilities at the schools and enhance the education experience for the children. Parent organizations raise funds, advocate for their children and keep an eye on achieving high academic standards.

‘‘No matter what we do, the common denominator is the school. We solely exist to enhance our schools, and the services and programs they provide to our kids,” said Sharon St. Pierre, vice president of educational issues with the Montgomery County Council of PTAs and president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring.

‘‘It isn’t just the family fun nights, the dances. ... We enhance the capacity for kids to learn,” she said.

The Paint Branch High School PTSA in Burtonsville will provide practice ACT and SAT tests at $10 a test for students this fall. The PTA at Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Silver Spring hosts volunteer committees for the school’s Spanish immersion and enrichment programs. The PTSA at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring seeks out volunteers to mentor students.

‘‘Just the other day, [my co-president Dave Ottalini] and I met for about an hour and a half with the principal, and shared with him the concerns the parents have in the community and the things we wanted to work on,” said Deborah Stoll, co-president of the Montgomery Blair PTSA.

PTAs are also vocal about educating parents on issues that affect their children. Barbara Turner, former PTSA president at Paint Branch High School, said the organization’s most successful seminars were those that shed light on the ‘‘secret life of teens,” or brought more of the students to the meetings.

One panel discussion, moderated by Leon Harris of WJLA-TV, was very much about ‘‘sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” Turner said. The panel helped ‘‘crack the barrier” for Turner and her son to more freely talk about issues affecting him, she said.

‘‘Their parents’ high school experience was a long time ago,” Turner said, talking about high school students. ‘‘Even the pressure of succeeding in high school, the competition ... we didn’t have that. I don’t know if I could survive with the same aplomb as my kids have.”

The growing, the proud

Nationally, the PTA has more than 7 million members. Maryland has more then 220,000, according to Melanie Roberts, an administrative assistant with the Maryland PTA. The goal for 2008 is to reach 300,000 members across the state, she said. Memberships have been dropping since the PTA’s peak year in 1963; there were 12.1 million members then, according to the National PTA.

‘‘It’s always hard to get parents involved. Everyone has a family, and it’s hard to make the time,” said Chris Miller, president of the PTAs for a pair of elementaries, Bel Pre and Strathmore in Wheaton. ‘‘We try to take anybody who will volunteer, whatever they’re willing to do.”

The county PTA provides sessions on how to get parents excited about volunteerism, and how to better work around schedules. Most PTA members don’t attend meetings — many parent group presidents reported between 10 to 20 in attendance regularly — and attendance spikes when controversial issues are on the table. Paint Branch High School has more than 550 members. Bel Pre-Strathmore has at least 200 members.

Although parents are typically more involved in the PTA when their children are in elementary school, numbers drop in the middle school years, and even more when their teens enter high school.

Part of this can be attributed to burnout, St. Pierre said. By middle school, parents have been involved in the PTA for six years. Many stay-at-home parents also go back to work after their children leave elementary school, and some parents feel there aren’t as many volunteering opportunities in the later years.

‘‘We’re not doing as good of a job as we could in middle school and high school with getting word out on the opportunities that do exist,” St. Pierre said. ‘‘We need to say, ‘We still need you, and here are the areas where we need you.’”

The organizational challenges have not been helped by the county’s flier controversy; the county schools have suspended the practice of allowing only certain groups, including PTAs, to send home fliers with students after a federal appeals court declared the practice unconstitutional because it was exclusionary.

In the meantime, parent groups — especially those on the elementary school level — came together with outside legislative bodies to come up with solutions.

At an Aug. 24 Montgomery County school board meeting, PTA members testified on the importance of sending information home to parents with their children. A vote on a compromise is expected this week.

Miller said her group has been trying to come up with alternatives to sending handouts home with children, but bulk mail is expensive, and not everyone is on the PTA listserves or uses e-mail.

‘‘Across the board, we’re having a really tough time with this. This could really mess us up,” Miller said.

Funded by mom and dad

Fund-raising may be the most well-known duty among parent groups. Most of the parent groups’ fund-raisers are organized to raise money for a specific project, such as the $13,000 raised by the Takoma Park Middle School PTA.

The total was reached through fund-raisers at restaurants throughout the area, bake sales, a benefit concert with jazz musician Chuck Redd, matched funds from parents of the school and persistence from the school PTA, said Michelle Harvey, co-president of the Takoma Park Middle School PTA.

Silent auctions, pizza and wrapping paper sales and book drives bring hundreds of dollars into the schools for everything from ice machines, school supplies to innovative programs.

PTA budgets also often set aside funding for scholarships and ‘‘mini-grants” between $200 to $500. At Montgomery Blair High School, one mini-grant paid for new books for a freshman seminar course called High School Connections.

PTA budgets are supplemented by donations and dues. Every member pays a $1 fee to the county and a $3.50 fee to the state, and then an amount set by the local PTA, usually about $10.

Outside of financial gifts, parents also donate their time. Many schools, such as Sligo Creek Elementary School and Silver Spring International Middle School, both in Silver Spring, hold beautification days where volunteers plant flowers, clean up trash and pull weeds on school grounds. Parents are also involved in planning assemblies, hosting staff appreciation days and chaperoning dances.

‘‘A lot of times parents or students don’t know that the services we provide, the assemblies that we fund, the programs we bring in, are done by the PTAs,” St. Pierre said. ‘‘Our mission is to do what’s best for our schools.”