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PTA / PTO Summer Schedule
With summer around the corner, and boards having recently transitioned, now is the perfect time to do some PTA housekeeping. The summer tends to be lighter on the school activity side and many PTOs or PTAs do not hold meetings over the summer. Yet, you often have some new board members who are engaged and ready to help as well as some existing members who may have a bit more time to give. So what can you do over the summer to set up your PTA for the fall? Here is a helpful summer schedule, or if you prefer listening to reading, check out the audio here.
June – Wrap up the Year
End of year recap communication to the parents. You likely started the year sharing a bit about the PTA and what your goals were for the year. This is the opportunity to brag about all you did! Make sure to highlight what impact you made for the kids this year. Share this recap in your newsletter, on social media, even at a school staff meeting.
Hold a transition meeting for your new board members where you talk about what worked, and what didn’t this past year, share any learnings, and give new board members an opportunity to ask questions of their predecessors.
July – Organize Your Files
July is a great time to create, or update, your documentation. If you haven’t already created a drive that is accessible to all board members, do that now. Store your by-laws, your position descriptions, prior meeting minutes, meeting agenda templates, budgets, anything else on this drive. If you already have a drive, make sure it is up to date and that the correct people have access. We often remember to add new people or documents but it is just as important to remove old documentation or members who have transitioned off.
If you need to update any fundamental documents, like your by-laws, summer is a good time to do so. Even if people are not available to meet, you can have people working on a draft on their own time.
August – Goal Setting
Host an end of summer board meeting where you dust off the notes from the June transition meeting. You want to pull up the goals from the prior year, the learning from the prior year, and then discuss what you want to achieve in the coming year. With the pandemic’s impact to education still at the forefront, I would expect unexpected things to come up. As a result, plan to have one major area. If you come to January and things are going well, you can always add another goal.
Come up with your membership goal/strategy. The best time to get new members is back to school so creating a plan before school starts is key. Make sure you have specific people accountable for each element of the plan.
September – Welcome Back Messaging
Encapsulate your major area of focus, and membership strategy, into a welcome back message for back to school time. Just like the end of year message, you want to share this across multiple platforms. You also want to share it more than once so that the school community understands what your PTA or PTO is trying to accomplish in the coming school year.
Finally, host your first meeting!
That’s it – your month-by-month guide to a productive, yet not overly burdensome, parent teacher group leader summer.