Several different thoughts on this:

1. This seems to be a trend of school boards putting these kind of comunications limits on "outside" groups and then including the PTA or PTO as "outside". This is complete bunk. Ugh. I understand how the backpack express has become too crowded and event hat there have been some court rulings demanding non-discrimination in what will be sent home from a public school, but the parent group at the school is not the samne as the karate school or the Church down the street. Fundamentally different. The parent group is an essential *part* of a well-working school. So my first response here is to educate the school board on why these policies are .... what's the right word??? ..... dumb!

(OK-- I'll breathe now....)

2. I wouldn't say it's the emergency cards, but there are lots of good ways to get this info. Best in my opinion is for the school to include a separate sheet with the enroolment or back-to-school paperwork that says something to the effect of: "Our XYZ PTO is trying to "go green" and push a lot of the parent communication toward email, instead of the backpack printed notes home. It will be very helpful if we can get email addresses for all the parents in the school. Please fill in your name and email address below, if it's OK for the PTO to include you on key parent email updates." Something like that.

At our school, we go one step further and -- after those forms come back (or don't) -- we reach out to the few people for whom we don't have emails and pro-actively ask them/explain why it's beneficial. We're up to 99% emails this year.

e-mail -- the killer PTO application of 2009-2010! (It does make communication with parents sooo much easier).

Tim

And that's a big "if," because at my school that is considered private information for the school's usage only. It would be a violation of privacy if it was just handed over to the PTA/PTO. Parents/guardians must OPT IN to any e-mail communication (other than emergency) from the school.

We would be in the same boat on this. While the district office tells us that the school is required to maintain a list of parents who have opted in to receive all communications, the school refuses to share that information with us.

That being said, there are other options. Do you have a local council of either all the PTA groups in the area or all of the parent groups in the district? If not, this could be a good time and reason to remedy that. In a recent controversial disagreement with our district, a notice to the school board telling them the amount of funding that the schools were receiving from all of the local parent groups combined, along with pointing out that they're well meaning policies would greatly inhibit our ability to continue with that work did the trick. And we knew that if having the discussion privately didn't work, bringing it up publicly at a school board meeting that was attended by local reporters, along with a few well placed letters to the editor would do the trick.

Something else to keep in mind is how few members of your community realize what the district is planning or all of the things that parent groups do for your local schools. In a recent survey we discovered that around 2/3 of our parents assumed that all of the things that our PTA does in our school are actually provided by the school, and that all we do is put on the monthly Family Fun Night. Getting that word out, both to your parents and to the community at large could lead to a backlash that will make the district rethink their position.

In this case talking with the district about both the reason for their decision and possible compromises may be in order. We agreed to limit communications to once a week on the same day each week, and to get principal approval on all flyers before sending them home.

Not really. In my school the PTA has to get approval for anything that is placed on the PTA webpage. Perhaps a completely independent website is a good idea...

As far as the website is concerned, we had the same issue with the school/district having control of the site itself. Our biggest problem was that their speed of updating our content was so slow that it was outdated by the time it got up there. We switched to our own site, and haven't had any problems at all. We just pointed out to the school that we were looking at a large amount of data that needed to go up and we didn't want to take away from the space and bandwidth that they were paying for, as well as the fact that we wanted to accept online payments and they didn't have the needed security encryptions accessible to us.

HTH!

Jaded-
Good point on the email contacts-- parents do need to opt in and you need to be specific with how you are going to use the email addresses. If your school publishes a school directory and you send out an information request form, you can ask for email addresses and specifically state that you will use it to send out PTO newsletters.

Lisa @ PTO Today

lgundlach;149342 wrote: More schools are moving away from backpack mail and using email. If you can get the emails at the start of the year from the emergency cards, you'll be on your way.

And that's a big "if," because at my school that is considered private information for the school's usage only. It would be a violation of privacy if it was just handed over to the PTA/PTO. Parents/guardians must OPT IN to any e-mail communication (other than emergency) from the school.

Developing a website is a good idea. You are in charge of it

Not really. In my school the PTA has to get approval for anything that is placed on the PTA webpage. Perhaps a completely independent website is a good idea...

Busymomof3-
hmrdaisy has a great suggestion. More schools are moving away from backpack mail and using email. If you can get the emails at the start of the year from the emergency cards, you'll be on your way.

Here's a link to an easy-to-use, free newsletter tool on our website that will make your life easier : Parent Express Email - The Free, Simple Email Solution for Parent Groups | PTO Today

I bet you'll find that you get even more parents reading the e-newsletter than the backpack version -- and you'll be saving a tree : )

Lisa @ PTO Today

Do you have a list of all the students in your school? We keep an emergency list with addresses and phone numbers. You may want to put out the expense of a mailing and ask for email addresses. You may not get all of them, but it'd get the word out and you can use the email as one of your means of communication. Developing a website is a good idea. You are in charge of it and can also create a new user page. Hope this helps.