Successfully Managing Parent and Community Groups with Christina Hidek
This is Season 6, Episode 8 of FocusED, and it features our guest, Christina Hidek; we discuss parent-teacher organization, managing community expectations, building relationships with key stakeholders, raising money…and so much more.
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Christina Hidek Brings a Tons of Experience to FocusED Listeners
Christina Hidek is a recovering attorney turned Professional Organizer and certified PTO volunteer nerd.
She founded PTO Answers 7 years ago to boost family engagement in schools and empower parents to improve their child’s educational experience and school community through PTA/PTO involvement.
She’s been an active PTO leader for the past 14 years and hosts the vibrant 8000 plus member Super Star PTO Leaders Facebook Group.
When she’s not volunteering, you can find her in her garden, listening to the latest Katherine Center audiobook or walking the family dogs.
FocusED Show Notes with Guest Christina Hidek
Christina starts out with some suggestions about how school leaders can get on the same page with the PTO/PTA President by meeting on a regular basis. The key is to meet ahead of the actual PTA meetings and separate from them.
School leaders should explain their vision for the school and the school year to the parent groups, starting with the PTA President.
School leaders and PTA Presidents should have a clear understanding of how they want to communicate.
Christina describes the strongest relationships that she had with principals and the trust and openingness that it takes.
School leaders should attend their PTA meetings and the measure of success is a lack of turnover in the group.
Every parent group should have at least one teacher liaison; the main point of the role is to bring the parent group information back to the teachers so that it doesn’t fall on the principals.
Christina reminds us that parents are volunteers, and they may need training. As soon as a group is formed, they need to be empowered and equipped with the right tools and information to go in the right direction.
There’s no PTA school. ~ Christina Hidek.
Christina consistently brings the conversation back to professional learning for parents. They can’t be a resource if they don’t know how.
She talks about her parent group raising $26K and what that means to the school community.
She hates the movie Bad Moms.
A tip for school leaders is to celebrate and highlight the work of their parent groups.
Christina tells us that there aren’t enough resources for PTOs/PTAs and school leaders who want to engage parents in the best way.
PTOAnswers/principals.com has resources for principals who want to better engage parent groups.
Check out FamilyEngagementTools.com.
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