Practical, Realistic Ways to Improve Your Local School: What I Learned As a PTA Volunteer
Last month, I sat through our elementary school’s PTA meeting on a wobbly folding chair, sipping lukewarm coffee out of a paper cup that leaked through the bottom onto my jeans. Halfway through, when the principal finished going over the 2024 budget that still froze most teacher pay raises and cut one part-time custodian position, Ms. Lopez – my third grader’s teacher – raised her hand. She twisted the edge of her lesson plan folder and said she’d spent $127 out of her own paycheck that month on pencil grips, extra snacks for kids who came to school hungry, and a set of graphic novels for the classroom reading corner. After the meeting, a dozen of us stood around in the parking lot, kicking gravel, complaining that nothing ever changes around here. That’s when I realized most of us were waiting for someone else to fix the school, instead of starting with the small, doable stuff we could handle right now.
I’ve been volunteering three hours a week for the last year, first in the classroom, then helping sort books in the library, so I’ve gotten a front row seat to what actually moves the needle – not just the big projects that get voted on at school board meetings.
The first change that made a huge difference didn’t cost more than $42 total. We had an old 10×12 storage closet off the main hallway, between the gym and the nurse’s office, that had been locked for as long as anyone can remember. It was full of broken desks from the 1990s, boxes of old yearbooks no one wanted, and a broken trampoline someone had dumped there years earlier. Our school counselor mentioned offhand one day that she didn’t have a private, quiet space to take kids who were overwhelmed after a fight with a friend, or who got overstimulated by the loud hallway between classes. Most of the time, she ended up talking to them in the corner of the main office, where everyone could see.
We put out a casual request on the neighborhood Facebook group, got a group of eight parents together over two weekends, and cleared the whole thing out. We got two bean bag chairs donated from a family that was redoing their basement, a used rug from someone who was replacing their living room floor, a pair of kid-sized noise-canceling headphones that a teen had outgrown, and a local art teacher painted a big mural of forest animals on one wall for free. The only things we bought were a new lock and a can of base paint for the walls.
A month after we opened the quiet break room, the counselor told me that before we had the space, she’d usually see 10 to 12 kids a week sent to the office for disruptive behavior that stemmed from being overstimulated and overwhelmed. Now that number is 2 or 3. A lot of kids just need 10 minutes to sit quiet and breathe before they go back to class, and we didn’t need a million dollar bond to make that happen.
Next, we tackled the constant stress of teachers buying their own classroom supplies. Most schools do big fundraisers like selling wrapping paper or cookie dough, where half the money goes to the fundraising company, and it takes months of work from volunteers. Instead, we did two simple, low-effort things. We asked every teacher to make a public Amazon wishlist with exactly the things they needed – no vague requests, just specific items like “10 packs of pre-sharpened 2 pencils” or “gluten-free granola bars” or “extra rain boots size 2 for the playground.” We pinned all the lists to the top of the PTA Facebook page, so anyone can pull them up when they’re stopping at Target on their way home. We also put a labeled bin by the front office, where people can drop off extra supplies they have sitting around at home any time.
Last week, a local woman who runs a home daycare dropped off three big boxes of brand new crayons and construction paper she’d bought for a sale that fell through. Last month, a dad who works at an office supply company dropped off 50 new folders. It’s not going to fix the fact that teachers are underpaid, but it takes the small, constant stress of buying $20 worth of supplies every month off their plate. Ms. Lopez told me last week she hasn’t bought any classroom supplies out of pocket in three months.
We also fixed our communication problem, which was way simpler than I thought it would be. Our school used to send out a 4-page monthly newsletter that got lost in a backpack or deleted from email before anyone read it. We suggested that every classroom set up a free, low-volume Google Group, where the teacher posts one short update a week. No long essays, just something like “This week we’re working on multiplication, we need one more pack of glue sticks, and the field trip is next Wednesday. Let me know if you can chaperone.” That’s it. Parents can opt in, no pressure, and if you can’t bring the glue sticks, you don’t have to reply. In the first semester, parent participation for classroom events went up 40%, just because people actually know what’s going on now. Before, half the parents didn’t even know the fall festival was happening until the day before.
A lot of people will say these are just band-aids, that we need big systemic change, more funding, better pay for teachers. And they’re right. We still need that. Our school still has a leaky roof in the gym, and we still only have one nurse for 500 kids. But waiting for big systemic change doesn’t mean we have to let kids and teachers deal with unnecessary stress right now. Most of the changes that work don’t require a huge budget or a district vote. They just require a group of people willing to spend a weekend clearing out a closet, or pick up an extra pack of pencils when they’re at the grocery store.
This year, we’re working on turning an unused patch of grass by the playground into a community vegetable garden, where kids can plant tomatoes and learn about gardening. We still don’t know if it’ll work, we’re waiting on the district to approve the plan, and we’re still arguing about whether we need a tall fence to keep the deer out. But even if it takes another six months, it’s still more progress than we had last year, when we just complained about the school in the parking lot and went home.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Practical, Realistic Ways to Improve Your Local School: What I Learned As a PTA Volunteer