Don Pedro PTA in Ceres wraps its arms around school needs, parent involvement

The number of parents pitching in to help at Don Pedro Elementary has been growing, helped by a dedicated couple leading the school’s PTA and a decision to include preschool parents in the mix.

Book swaps, holiday grams and a “Big Hero” movie night raised visibility for the all-volunteer group. Fundraisers, such as one at which teachers served diners at a fast-food outlet, made financing as much about making friends as making money, said PTA President Juan Reyna.

“We had a movie night with over 300. It was full,” Reyna said. “It was a great thing to see all these families together. We get them talking and finding out they have a lot in common.”

The bridges he hopes to build are between English- and Spanish-speaking parents at the school, a hurdle many parent groups struggle to overcome, said Debra Elliot with the regional 8th District PTA. Eighth District covers Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Merced, Calaveras, Tuolumne and Mariposa counties.

“One of the things we really try to do is make sure we’re getting folks who can connect with the parents they have,” Elliot said. “It’s not your mom’s PTA anymore.”

Most Don Pedro students, 85 percent, are Latino and more than half are still learning English. Reyna and the PTA vice president, his wife Irma Reyna, are bilingual.

The school had parents and teachers who paid their $5 to be PTA members. But when the Reynas stepped up to help in the fall, they found almost no one went to the meetings. “We started out with just two,” both Reynas said with a laugh. Now more than 30 active parents show up at PTA meetings.

The club officially has 101 members – a record – but families for all the school’s 786 students are welcome at everything the group does, he said.

That goes for parents in Head Start and state preschool programs at the campus, too, starting with a preschool table at the PTA book swap, where parents got to trade books their kids had outgrown for new ones. “It worked out wonderful,” he said.

The PTA officially voted to include the preschools and dedicated a fundraiser to them. To date, 19 parents have joined.

“It’s the first time preschool’s been included. Being a part of the school community is wonderful,” said preschool site supervisor Sylvia Scott, who oversees services for 120 youngsters. “They’ve been very approachable,” she said, referring to the parent group leaders. “They listen and they care. That’s the big thing – they care a lot.”

That care has made a difference schoolwide, said teachers on a field trip with PTA parents helping out.

“Their involvement has helped. We have a lot more parent volunteers than we used to,” said Don Pedro first-grade teacher Rikke Christiansen.

“They’re bringing a positive atmosphere to the school,” added Emily Goodwin, also a first-grade teacher.

Another parent helping chaperone the trip, Patty Ontiveroz, said she was not active in the parent group, but was glad to see more parents helping in classrooms. “It lets parents be more involved with their kids. It gives them a chance to see what all the teachers do with the kids,” she said.

Guadalupe Vergara, who works with the school’s walking school bus program, said the parent group is helping. “They work so hard and they do so many things – they’re positive,” she said through a translator.

The nonprofit Parent Teacher Association, now known just as PTA, is the historic name associated with parent groups. National PTA began as a lobbying group, fighting for child labor laws, a separate juvenile justice system and kindergarten, notes its website. It remains a lobbying force at the federal level, and helped design the No Child Left Behind section requiring schools to show parent involvement.

Volunteer PTA lobbyists walk a nonpartisan line through the Capitol in Sacramento. Though allied with teachers unions in the Education Coalition, California State PTA positions advocating more spending for health and children’s services have been at odds with the group, which focuses entirely on education funding. The state PTA has a new parent advocacy effort focused on arts education.

Members pay $5.75 in dues, divided between a regional PTA, California State PTA and National PTA. In Turlock, elementary school PTAs pay a quarter more to support a citywide Turlock Council PTA.

At Don Pedro, where about 80 percent of the students get free lunches, the PTA voted to keep its dues $5 and pay the rest from fundraising, Juan Reya said. “We don’t want to lose PTA volunteers. For 75 cents, we’re going to lose a person? Their time and effort is worth more than 75 cents,” he said.

For those dues, the PTA administrative umbrella comes with automatic nonprofit status, oversight of tax filings and a year’s insurance coverage for all their events for around $210. But for Reyna, the biggest plus was having someone to call to get the group’s financial books in order, arrange licensing to show a Disney movie and state clearance to hold a raffle.

“They got your back when it comes to filing paperwork. We’ve got a go-to person when we have a question about anything,” he said.

Don Pedro PTA also got a scholarship to attend the annual state PTA convention earlier this month, filled with workshops on current topics; meetings with speeches and children’s performances; and a massive display area for fundraising firms, assembly providers and nonprofits to showcase their offerings. Some workshops were in Spanish.

One workshop had legislators talk about their hot-topic bills. Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, discussed legislation he’s crafting on student privacy: “None of this happened when we were in high school.” Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician, said his bill stiffening immunization requirements, SB 277, was motivated by an outbreak of measles while he was in medical school that sickened 900 and killed nine children.

That was the state PTA’s 115th convention. Despite its long history and layered resources, however, PTA is no longer the only game in town for parent groups. About 25,000 schools have PTAs out of the nearly 100,000 schools nationwide.

Most schools have stand-alone parent groups, often called Parent Teacher Clubs or booster clubs, that set up their own nonprofit status through the Internal Revenue Service and either buy their own insurance or the school buys extra coverage for them.

About 1,500 schools pay $199 to belong to the Parent Teacher Organization Plus group, according to an Ed Week article. PTO Pluses get a package of parent group services and are able to buy insurance packages ranging from $285 to $625, according to a price list on the for-profit company’s website. The site also has extensive free tips and materials for parent groups.

PTO and PTA have battled for years over PTO marketing practices, which include a PTO vs. PTA resources page encouraging PTAs to switch. In 2012, National PTA sued School Family Media Inc., parent company of PTO Today. The lawsuit settled without damage payments in March 2013, Ed Week reported.

This story was originally published May 26, 2015 at 3:10 PM with the headline "Don Pedro PTA in Ceres wraps its arms around school needs, parent involvement."