National PTA Convention: Byron V. Garrett's Keynote Remarks

It’s exciting for an entire family to partake in what you already know: that the PTA family is rich in culture and tradition.  Yet I challenge you today to figure out how we step forward into the future.  How will you decide to take that step?  When you think about the scope of PTA, we are an incredible organization in terms of size.  We are the largest child advocacy organization in the country.  None of that is new information to you.  We’re woven into the fabric of American society.  That is a fact—it is not fiction.  Many people can claim to be many things, but they cannot claim to be five million folks going strong on behalf of children every single day. That’s who you represent, from all across this country. You have to be proud of the legacy and history that we stand upon today.

As we step forward into the future, think about all the connections and all those great folks who have done significant work.  Then think about the hill that we still have yet to climb.  There is no question about our success historically—even with what we’re doing right now—but the question remains: “How will we develop a PTA that will be viable in 2018, 2048, 2088, and years to come?”  We are 113 years old.  I want to be here 113 years from now, as an organization, though none of us will be here physically. We’ve got to be thinking, “How do we push the envelope to ensure that PTA continues strong?”

Many of you responded this year when we issued our call for “PTA Takes Action.”  We wanted folks to write in, we wanted folks to place phone calls, we wanted to press the folks in Washington DC—to sit up, stand up, and take notice: PTA is not off the scene.  We want to be front and center.  We’ve been at the forefront of all these conversations that everybody else gets to take credit for.  I love having a juvenile justice system, but I want Americans to know that we have it because of National PTA.  I love having hot school lunches for students, but they need to know that we have them because of National PTA.  You’ve got to be thinking in this day and age, “How do we continue to tell the story so that people fundamentally understand that many of the great things that have happened in America on behalf of children, they happened because of the National PTA?”

Someone said to me the other day, “Oh, you know we had the Facebook campaign… We did pretty well, we raised some money for the organization.”  And I said, “Do you realize we finished number eight out of ten?  Do you realize most of those organizations listed in the top ten with us came into existence years and decades after PTA was founded?”  I could have also said, “Had it not been for National PTA, many of the organizations that serve children today at a state and local level probably would not exist.”  It’s because folks like you in the community get together and think that not only do we need to impact change in our schools, but we need to impact our entire community.  You should be excited and proud about all of the great things that you have done—not just here at this convention, but everything that we do across the country, everything that we do in the territories, and everything that we do overseas.

I went to our European PTA convention this year, and we have got to figure out how to connect with our military families.  It’s a totally different situation.  My eyes were wide and open as I sat there and looked.  And I listened to families on military bases who think that the only folks that they have are the folks right there.  You can decide whether you want to visit a church, or school, whether you want to go to the movies, or go to the mall, whether you want to hang out with your friends and go shopping, whether you want to take a road trip.  But for our military families that are deployed overseas, in many cases the collection of individuals that are right there on the base with them— those are their best friends, their best advocates.  And we’ve got to answer our new president, who asked all of us, “How do we connect with those particular individuals?”

Many folks have also said to me, “You keep pushing the envelope about technology, but what does that really mean?”  Well, you have all answered the call with Facebook, but there is much more.  When you think about how we step into the future, getting connected via technology is critically important to the viability and vitality of this organization.  Our 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-, 70-, 80-something parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles—they recognize the need in many communities to be connected in a technological way.  The reality is technology works!  It’s a way to stay connected; all of those virtual PTAs and folks that meet online.  Do you know more people visit our Facebook page looking to get information about our website?  They recognize the value and brand of National PTA.  They want to know what you’ve already discovered.  But as those people get engage PTA online, how do we ensure that we transition them into membership?  We want them to not only benefit from the organization, but also to contribute to the membership that we have.  We have a lot of work yet to do from a technology perspective.

I also want you to be thinking about how climates have shifted across the United States.  What has transitioned and happened in America?  Not because we have President Obama in the White House, not because we have a First Family with school-age kids.  That’s great!  But this economic crisis has taught us that everybody needs to go back to work.  Mothers who never thought they would have to leave home are at work.  Dads who thought that they would never have to babysit and take their kid to a doctor appointment are saying, “I don’t know how to do all that.”  You will quickly learn and understand it better by and by.  That’s the reality.  That’s how society has shifted.  At PTA, we’ve got to be thinking— with all of the challenges that face our families—how do we help them balance their budgets?  How do we help them meet their needs?  I would like to think that going to a PTA meeting is going to solve all of their problems but it’s not.  Bylaws, policies, procedures—there’s a place for that for those folks that want to be engaged in that portion of the business.  But for many folks who have competing interests, multiple jobs, less-flexible work schedules—they’re sitting here trying to figure out, “How do I go to school?  How do I get more education?  How to I make sure the kids get picked up?”  They are dealing with all of those things and they are saying, “Where are the resources that are relevant and meet my needs?”  That’s the question that stands before us today.  How do we ensure that as families are creating new lifestyles  and new structures, how do we ensure that PTA—today, tomorrow, and years to come—creates programs, materials, resources, and services to meet their needs?  That’s the significant challenge.

We’re in crisis in America.  We’re in crisis financially.  I’m excited to know that 100 billion dollars will come from the Department of Education—kudos.  But what is our response to the president after he said, “You have got to help ensure that the dollars flow from DC out to your state and into your school—that it doesn’t get lost at the state capitol”?  We have to do that.  Collectively, we have got to do that.  We’ve got to make sure 100 billion dollars is spent well, is spent wisely, and spent where we need it.  You know why we need to do that?  Because folks like you came to our legislative conference back in March and told our officers, “You may cut anything else you want to cut out of the stimulus dollars, but we will not balance the budget on the backs of children.”  We need dollars to support our schools and make sure kids get educated in this country.  That’s the crisis in America.

We bailed out all the businesses, but the federal government does not have enough money to bail out the educational system.  I wish they did.  They don’t.  So school principals and administrators turn to the PTA.  “I need to support an arts education teacher.  You have a Reflections Program.  Can you raise enough money to support part of his salary?”  That’s not new for us because we have been doing that for decades.  We’ve always stepped in to fill the gap when the state, the county, and local school districts, and the federal government, all came up short.  You do that every single day in your community.  So we’ve got to continue to advocate, letting folks know we’re serious about education. We’re serious about ensuring that every single child in this country has an opportunity to be educated.

Folks got excited about having Dara Torres at this convention—and she’s one of our best ambassadors. She is a tremendous athlete as well.  We all celebrated her success as an Olympian.  I was so thrilled like the rest of you to see Michael Phelps take home all of his gold medals.  We were so excited as a country, you could not go to a single place in the United States where people were not glued to the television screen.  But where is that excitement and enthusiasm when it comes to our kids and schools? We don’t need people on the sideline cheering because you can swim in a pool.  We need to be on the sidelines of the classroom cheering, because you can graduate and actually learn something of significance that contributes to the bottom line.

If we had an international Olympics of academics today, our students would be ranked 25th in math and 21st in science.  They would not be anywhere near the top 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 slots.  Nineteen of 100 high school students don’t graduate on time.  Look around the room now and think about out of every 100 individuals at this convention, which 19 are the unlucky few that don’t graduate on time?  Is it you?  Is it the person who flew here with you from Colorado or Wyoming, or North Carolina?  Is it the individual that sat next to you in a workshop?  Who is it that’s not the fortunate individual that gets to graduate?  That’s the same question we should ask for every single child.

I love my nephews dearly as if they were my own children.  I have never been concerned about the educational process of Brandon and Dwayne.  Never.  Because I will do all that I can, and our family will do all that it can, to ensure their academic future.  I’m concerned about every other child that interacts with Brandon and Dwayne.  Who’s going to advocate for them? Who’s speaking up for the kid on the play ground?  Who’s the person at the table saying every child deserves the same opportunity?  We’ve got to begin to think differently to make sure we are not missing the mark.

Operation was my favorite game as a child.  I tried to have the steady hand to remove the funny bone or the wishbone and I sat there and I would concentrate for hours at a time.  This is what we do with our kids every day.  We ask our school systems, we ask parents, we ask educators to pick and choose.  We ask them to choose between not a funny bone, or the heart, or the lung—we ask them to choose between the things that are most important, like math or arts education.  We ask you to choose between English and Nutrition and Special Needs.  Why can’t a child in this country have all of them instead of one?  This is not a “yes, or” conversation, it is a “yes, and” conversation.  And you have to advocate that we get all of those things for every child in this country.  One third of children in this country do not have healthcare.  My mom has three boys.  So which one of the three of us doesn’t get healthcare today?  Do I get to go to the dentist or do I not get to go because I’m the youngest?  How do you make that decision?  But parents every single day across this country are faced with that.

I recently told former Secretary of Education Spellings at an event, “I’m really concerned.  Half of America is going to be uneducated in this generation.”  And she said, “Byron, you are correct.”  But we cannot survive as a country half educated.  I want you to think about this: if only half of our children are getting a quality education in this country, how then do we ensure our future going forward?  Who are the individuals to fill the jobs that we are supposedly creating now?  Who will be the next individual that is your child’s teacher, or school principal, or school administrator, or technology officer for your school district?  Who’s going to fill those jobs?  We can transfer a whole host of things overseas via call centers, but nothing will substitute an actual teacher standing in front of a child giving quality instruction Monday through Friday.  America cannot survive half educated.  It simply cannot.

So how do we step into the future?  This is an audacious task for us.  We have approximately 5.2 million members, with 81 full-time staff, 1 part-time staff member, and 2 interns.  I did the math.  We have one staff person to serve every 62,232 members across the country.  Now think about the number of school-age children that reside in our schools—there are approximately 50 million of them in elementary and secondary across the United States.  We have 5 million members to contribute to their education.  Five million strong.  It may seem like an audacious task, but guess what?  We have the capacity, the willingness, and the ability to get it done.  It’s all we know how to do.  We’ve always stepped to the forefront; we’ve always been on the cutting edge of what should be happening in education on behalf of children.  But I need you to do something in order to make sure that it works.  We must ensure going forward, that we are relevant.  Look at this convention, and look at the demographics of your communities back home: Caucasian, female, age 40 to 50, income $75,000 and above, in the suburbs of America, and they like face to face action.  That is tremendous, but we need that and then some.  I need you to ensure that we are ethnically diverse, that we mirror the population that we live in.  We need to ensure that moms are not in the PTAs without dad coming.  Dad shouldn’t just go to the football game on Friday or the basketball game on Thursday.  We need Dad actively involved in the academic life of every single child, not just the athletic.  We need folks that are community-based, that are out in the community partnering with faith-based organizations and other non-profits.  The idea that PTA can do this alone is a large assumption for us to make as an organization. We need partners across the board to help do this heavy lifting on behalf of every child in this country.  We need to work with the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, Junior Achievement, Catholic services, and all of the other organizations.  We’ve got to ensure that they are at the table.

I am really concerned about the ethnicity in the organization, but I’m more concerned about the youthful vitality of PTA.  Where are your sons, your daughters, your nieces, your nephews, your grandchildren?  How are they engaged?  Is there room for them in PTA?  That’s a question that only you can answer.  But shouldn’t your daughter want to be part of the organization you spent decades helping to build?  Shouldn’t there be room for her to sit at the table and be a president and not wait five to ten years because that’s been the process previously?  Where’s the opportunity for them now?  This new generation says, “I want it now, not tomorrow.”  It doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate bylaws and tradition—it means that they have a skill and want to contribute it the way that they want to.  Don’t you want them at the table?  Don’t you want to ensure that they’re here when you’re no longer on the scene?  Don’t you want to help train them so that they know how to do it right? Don’t we want all of those folks and then some at the table?

I have this new philosophy called “And Then Some” that I’ve been sharing with people across the country.  Let me tell you a story to illustrate this.  I once saw a restaurant catch on fire, and the first fire truck that pulled up just sat there.  They observed it, and they were looking at it, and I’m thinking, “The fire alarm is going off, and I see smoke out of the top of the building. How long does it take to assess this?”  I’m not a fireman but I realize the building is on fire!  They called 911, and the fire truck showed up, so obviously the situation has been assessed.  By the time 20 minutes go by, five different trucks are on the scene and several individuals are out on the street and they’ve taken the ladders and gone up to the top.  And all of a sudden I heard this big crash on the roof.  Glass was knocked out of the windows. Now, if I’m in my house and my house is on fire, I don’t want a fireman to come to the door and knock and say, “Excuse me, Mr. Garrett, is everything okay?”  I want a fireman and then some.  I want them to kick the door down, see that I’m on the floor, and pick me up and carry me out like I see in all the movies.  I need a fire fighter and then some.

Our children don’t need teachers every now and then, who sometimes care and sometimes don’t.  We need teachers for our students and then some.  I need a teacher who comes in early and stays late. A teacher who doesn’t just put their work in the back seat, give it a good ride around town, and then bring it back to the office the next morning.  I need a teacher for a kid in this day and age who is a teacher and then some.  And guess what? We also need schools for our children in this day and age.  We need schools and then some.  We don’t need schools that fall apart every single day.  Not even sometimes. But we do send kids to schools that are in terrible condition every single day, year after year after year.  We need a school that is a viable and healthy environment for our children and then some.  So we need a PTA and then some.  I don’t need a PTA that only meets one day a week to discuss the fundraising activity that will build a new football stadium.  We do need that.  But we need a PTA and then some.  We need PTAs that are willing to go to the mall on the weekend and hand out fliers and meet mom wherever she is in the nail salon because she didn’t have time to come to the school during the week to say, “Hi, how are you doing?  How can I assist you?”  You need to be a PTA and then some.  And I don’t need dad to show up before football practice or drive through the carpool lane and drive back.  We need dads and then some.  I need a mother that is going to be directly engaged in the life of her children.  I need a father that is going to be directly involved.  We don’t need parents who drop kids off at school thinking “I’m now done with my responsibilities.”  We need parents and then some.

We’ve got to think about the concept of embracing change.  Not because the White House has changed. Because America has changed.  80% of our population resides in urban settings across the country.  If we want to be at the forefront, we have got to be wherever the people are.  We’ve got to embrace change in a very significant way.  You have got to figure out how to meet parents where they are.  Kudos to all of you here—you are directly engaged in the life of your children.  You spend time on campus. You go on field trips.  You help come up with money when the budget is short.  But that is not the average parent in society unfortunately.

When I was as a principal, I had a student by the name of Jamie Macaroy.  He was a kindergartener.  I was determined to be out front every single day to see my students and their parents, face to face, to make a connection with them.  But I was not prepared.  There was no textbook, there was no training to prepare me for Jamie Macaroy.  This five-year-old, who I had to get down on my knee to talk to—face to face—said, “My mom told me I was coming to school to play; I want to go to the play ground.”  And I’m thinking, “Your mother lied to you.”  So I take Jamie to the cafeteria to get some breakfast, then, of course, his next request is that I stay with him the whole day, and he says, “Let’s go play.”  So we go out to the play ground and I find myself playing in my nice suit because it’s the first day of school, my first day of being a principal, and now I’m dirty already and the first bell has yet to ring.  Because I’m sitting there, engaging Jamie and creating a bond and a relationship.  Jamie needed the same thing every child in this country does.  Some adult who is willing to take a knee and see them exactly where they are for who they are.

We have a crisis.  But this room is full of crisis solvers.  We have challenges that we face, but our will and our mission is far greater.  When you think about how we move this organization forward, I want you to think about how you spend your time as you leave this convention.  How do you apply the information that you’ve gained to ensure that those who are not here benefit from it.  How do we ensure that we usher in this nuance of change so that this organization will be here when none of us are still sitting in these seats or roaming down the aisles?

I was in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this year and I was so excited to go to this particular PTA where they distribute clothing not only for their students, but for their families.  I’m thinking “PTAs do that?  PTA actually has a clothing shelter?  Where is this on the news?  Where is 60 Minutes?  Where are the folks that report everything else?  You tell me about the homeless, why don’t you tell me about the solutions?  I’ve got a solution right here: 4,000 kids got clothed in Louisville because of PTA.  Where is that in the media clip? Where is that in the highlights?”  And you have all of those stories across the country.  We have health clinics in L.A. that PTA has funded for years.  That’s not new.  They didn’t want to put them in the community, so PTA raised the money to do it.  We’ve got to tell folks that.  They can’t relegate us to the sideline, we’re the National PTA.

I want you to think about the amount of time that you get every single day.  People think that checks will solve every single problem, but the reality is they won’t.  There is not enough money in the federal and state government to solve all of our issues.  That’s a fact.  And so is this: family engagement is the leading indicator of academic success.  So consider that we get 86, 400 seconds every day, and how you use it and how you lose it is up to you.  Whether you tweet it away, whether you sleep it away, whether you work it away—at the end of the day, and the sun goes down, whatever you did or did not do, it’s past, it’s finished.  It’s over.  You cannot correct, modify, and change anything that has transpired.

Because you are a leader, I want you to understand the value of time.  How do you understand the value of one single year?  Ask any student that’s ever failed a grade.  How do you understand the value of one solitary month?  Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby how they can articulate the value of every single month there is to live.  How do you understand the value of one week?  Ask someone who works a part- or full-time job and doesn’t get their check at the end of the week on Friday.  How do you understand the value of one single day?  The next time you meet someone dying of an internal illness given three weeks to live, you will quickly discover the value of every single day.  How do you understand the value of one single solitary hour?  Think about the next time you go to the airport and you get your time schedules mixed up and you show up one hour late and the plane has left the gate.  That would be the value of one single hour.  Beyond that, how do you understand the value of one minute?  Should you show up at a meeting that could save or transform someone else’s life—that would be the value of one minute.  How do you understand the value of one second?  Think about championship basketball games, where there will always be one team who is two points behind with one second left on the clock.  But beyond that, how do you put a value on a millisecond or nanosecond?  Just look at the person who takes home the silver or bronze in the Olympics, and that’s the value of time.  Every single day the sun rises and every single day the sun sets: 86,400 seconds—and how we choose it and how we lose it is up to you.

As we depart from this convention, remember that you have two feet.  That means you usually have one foot that is stuck in the past and one in the present.  I need you to do me a favor on behalf of this entire organization.  Instead of having one foot in the past, I need you to move it to the present.  Until you move it to the present, you will have nothing with which to step into the future.  Let me tell you one more time.  You have two feet.  When you leave this convention, what I need you to do on behalf of all the millions of families that we serve around the globe is to recognize that you have two feet, not one.  And going forward, on behalf of this organization and the legacy that was created by those three phenomenal women over a century ago, you must recognize that most of us have one foot in the past and one firmly planted in the present.  What I need you to do, please, is to take your foot from the past and put it in the present so that you have something to step forward into the future.