What to Expect from The Sustainable PTO

Sustainability (noun): the ability to maintain a certain rate or level.

At nearly every elementary, middle and high school in the United States, some form of a parent-teacher organization exists.

Some schools have a PTA, a chartered organization under the umbrella of a state and national association. Others have PTOs—many of them formalized as incorporated organizations and nonprofits, but lacking the oversight of a larger organization. Some focus on community building, while others are simply fundraisers to offset costs for families and schools.

And though the organization is designed to do the same thing year over year, it’s unsurprising that the most consistent thing about PTOs is a lack of consistency. Parents join when their children start school and leave as those children move on.

Because the membership of PTOs is constantly in flux, a common pitfall is the loss of functional knowledge and a need to re-learn what to do and how to do it with each successive wave of new parents.

Participation ebbs and flows as parents with different priorities and level of engagement come through. Many organizations rely on a small group of highly-involved parents—usually moms, but not exclusively—to plan events, run fundraisers, communicate with administrators, and keep the organizations going.

With multiple children passing through the school, these leaders can stay on for years taking over the responsibilities of the PTO. When they inevitably leave the school, a vacuum is left behind and the next crop of PTO leaders frequently find themselves scrambling to figure out how one person did so much for so long.

So, why does it happen so often? Why do motivated PTO parents so frequently step into roles and find a lack infrastructure? No notes, no info passed on, nothing except an idea and a directive to hop to it.

It’s exhausting. It discourages participation from new families and leads to burnout from motivated ones, putting undue pressure on the parents and caregivers that choose to step up.

The goal of this Substack is to help you prevent that from happening.

We want our PTO to succeed. We want it to support our community, raise lots of money, host fun events, and support our school. In order to do all those things, we need to set ourselves up for success.

Every week, you’ll be prompted to think about something that helps your organization be more organized, more thoughtful, more prepared. Free subscribers will be able to read posts with actionable takeaways and paid subscribers will have access to downloadable worksheets and planning documents. This system is designed to enable your organization to create a master PTO plan that can be passed on and updated year after year.

This will include practical information like the organization’s EIN number, bank accounts, website information and social media handles and passwords. But will also help define your PTO’s mission and goals, understand your community and recognize its needs. You will be asked to think about what has been done in the past and consider what you want to do in the future.

That’s what I’m doing in my current role as secretary of my son’s elementary school PTA. After two years in the position, I’m stepping down as he reaches his final year and I’m determined to leave the group in a better place than when I stepped into the role. Everything I write and the worksheets and planning documents that will be available in the future is for myself as much as it is for everyone else.

Did you feel prepared to take on the responsibility or were you left floundering? Tell us in the comments what happened when you said yes to more.

Leave a comment