Partners in Leadership - August 2008 |
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In This Issue Go Back to School with Local Units MORE Resources for PTA Three for Me Look for PTA Take Your Family to School Week Info in October Update! Phoebe Apperson Hearst Family-School Partnership Awards Coming Soon: National PTA's TCBI! Let's Fight Flu Together Campaign Emergency Preparedness: What We Can Do Increase Family Dinners; Decrease the Risk of Drug Use Win $1,000 in Books for Your School! PTA's Back-to-School Webcast Now on YouTube! August 2008 What you need to know as a state PTA leader. The Power of Partnerships PTA is in the business of building successful family-school partnerships to support student success. Local units will get some additional guidance with the Power of Partnerships booklet, being included with the October/November issue of Our Children magazine and supporting online resources on PTA.org. While effective family-school partnerships are best realized through local action, state leaders play an important role. Go online for a few ways you can help local communities build successful partnerships. Raise Awareness
Take Action
Celebrate Success
Get ready to support your local units in building successful partnerships. Watch PTA.org this fall for the latest resources. Go Back to School with Local Units Experience the excitement of back-to-school season by getting involved in local activities. Encourage state board members to
There are several more ways to support your units during this back-to-school season. Here are more ways to support local, council, district, and regional PTAs during this back-to-school season.
OMDR Plus is Just Weeks Away As August comes to a close, changes are right around the corner — the arrival of OMDR Plus, powered by Just Between Friends, is literally a few weeks away. Within the next few weeks, version one of this exciting new software application will be available for all states and units to begin using. First, OMDR Plus will be all of the communication, directory, and social networking capabilities that already exist in Just Between Friends. Additionally, there will be many new capabilities in this release; although the final set of functionality is still being worked through, the following is an overview of the capabilities that are likely to be there when the final testing has been completed:
All of this, and it's still just version one; there is so much more to come as we unfold our three year plan. When the availability of OMDR Plus is official, you will be notified. Although every unit and every state will be more than welcome to sign up, requests will be handled on a first come, first served basis. Judging by everyone's reaction and the building anticipation, a backlog could occur. We will do our very best to minimize the wait time. When you are ready to begin, or even get in line now, simply contact Julia Sheffler of JustBetweenFriends at (412) 561-0500 or at jsheffler@justbetweenfriends.net (preferred method). MORE Resources for PTA Three for Me The members of PTA's MORE—Men Organized to Raise Engagement—alliance are a great resource for involving dads in their children's education and schools. Encourage local units to explore these organizations' programs, events, and tools as ways to help men fulfill the Three for Me commitment—and as outreach opportunities to recruit men to sign the commitment card and join PTA.
Direct units to www.pta.org/MORE or the brochures in the 2008 PTA Back-to-School Kit for more information, as well as tools for getting started. Look for PTA Take Your Family to School Week Info in October PTAs across the country are once again offering an ideal place to spend time with family... in our schools!Schools nationwide will open their doors to parents in celebration of PTA Take Your Family to School Week (February 9-13). The special time has been established as a weeklong event to connect parents and families to their children's school experience. As in past years, the PTA national office will award $1,897 to 32 PTA schools to help thousands of students and families celebrate PTA Take Your Family to School Week. Research shows that family involvement drives higher student achievement, and PTA Take Your Family to School Week gives today's parents and families the key to the door of their children's school experience. Look for information to arrive in your mailbox in October to submit an application for your PTA unit to receive an $1,897 Award! Update! Phoebe Apperson Hearst Family-School Partnership Awards PTA's new Phoebe Apperson Hearst Family-School Partnership Awards recognize and celebrate units that are successfully implementing the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships. For these new awards, there will be a new application… Online! Units will also be able to download an application form to submit via postal mail, but online applications are strongly encouraged. To facilitate this new application option, the instructions and form will be available this fall. Stay tuned to pta.org/hearst for more information and updates. Applications for the 2008-2009 awards will be due March 1, 2009. Coming Soon: National PTA's TCBI! The Training Capacity Building Initiative (TCBI) is a three-year program to assist state PTAs in building their capacity to meet their state's local training needs. TCBI provides consistent, high-quality, core PTA content for trainings to local unit PTAs in all 53 states and congresses. In October, the PTA training department will host the second TCBI Training of Trainers and the first Deliberative Dialogue Moderator Training for year one participants. Upon completion of TCBI, all states and congresses will be equipped with extra human and material resources to meet the needs of states and congresses as assessed by state presidents. State presidents will send out these trainers at their discretion to meet the needs of local units that may desire training or require training and orientation on PTA-specific topics. In addition, a National Training Library is being developed. This training library will contain various workshops pertinent to PTA issues. The workshops will be used by these trainers to train local units. The library is organized around the five strategic initiatives of the National Strategic Plan in the categories of Leadership, Membership, Organizational Effectiveness, Diversity, and Financial Viability. Watch future issues of PTA Partners in Leadership for more details. 2007 Annual Report A Community Connected, the 2007 PTA annual report, is now available at PTA.org. Discover how PTA is working in communities across the country to support our children and youth—and how the organization is building on its strategic plan. Download the 2007 annual report and share it with your members, sponsors, and partners today! Let's Fight Flu Together Campaign 
PTA recently launched the Let's Fight Flu Together campaign—an influenza awareness and vaccination campaign that centers around PTA's commitment to building healthy families and communities. Through this campaign, schools will be able to implement their own influenza vaccination clinic for families and their community. Local unit presidents, state presidents, state offices, and council/districts/regional leaders have been sent an Influenza Education & Vaccination Outreach Kit during the week of August 18th. The kit will provide turn-key materials on how local PTAs can host an influenza vaccination clinic in their schools. Additional kits can be ordered by calling (866) 782-3014 or visiting the Let's Fight Flu Together website pta.org/flushotclinics. A donation per shot will be made to the local PTA hosting a clinic and to each state PTA in good standing. Spread the word about the Let's Fight Flu Together Campaign to your local units and constituents. Together, PTA and Flu Busters can make a significant impact across the nation to help families stay healthy during the influenza season! Emergency Preparedness: What We Can Do No one likes to think about the things that might bring harm to their families, but the best way to protect them is to be prepared. That’s why PTA is again part of the coalition supporting September’s National Preparedness Month, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Ready campaign. During National Preparedness Month, all families are encouraged to take the time to: Assess your level of readiness and spread the word to your units. Visit Listo America for information for Spanish-speaking families. Increase Family Dinners; Decrease the Risk of Drug Use The more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or use drugs, finds research by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. That’s the basis for CASA’s Family Day—A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children™, a national movement to inform parents that the parental engagement fostered during frequent family dinners is an effective tool to help keep America’s kids substance free. In recognition of the importance of Family Day, celebrated this year on September 22, the PTA national organization is a Family Day partner. As a state leader, you can
For more on the research about the impact of frequent family dinners, visit casacolumbia.org. Win $1,000 in Books for Your School! PTA Reads for the Record PTA is proud to join the Pearson Foundation in supporting Jumpstart's Read for the Record Campaign, which engages people across the country in reading the same book on the same day to break the Guinness World Record™ and attracts national and local media attention for early learning. Through the collaboration of the PTA national organization and the Pearson Foundation, local PTAs that host an event to read Corduroy on October 2, 2008, are eligible to receive literature books valued at $1,000 for their school library or media center. The one PTA school in each state with the highest proportion of participation (based on the school's student population) will receive the book donation. Please spread the word and encourage local units to participate. Place information in newsletters, send messages through listservs, promote the program at meetings, and reach out to state and local media. After October 2, your help will also be needed to ensure that the schools identified as potential winners are PTAs in good standing, based on state bylaws. Winners will be announced in November or early December. Direct PTAs to PTA.org for more information and pearsonfoundation.org/pta to register their participation. PTA's Back-to-School Webcast Now on YouTube! PTA's first-ever Back-to-School Webcast is now on PTA's YouTube channel. The webcast featured discussion on several topics such as coping with the economy, giving allowances, transitioning to new schools, getting kids active, preparing for tests, and more. Taped at Kozminski Elementary School on Chicago's south side, the three-part webcast featured PTA's first-ever male, African-American national CEO, Byron Garrett; PTA's first-ever male national president-elect, Chuck Saylors; and PTA's national secretary/treasurer, Betsy Landers. youtube.com/user/nationalpta
Key dates from this issue 2008 August
September
October
November
2009 February
March
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