Principals, are you looking to build a vibrant and active Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) in your school community?
A school parent group that supports you and your entire school community?
One that helps facilitate family engagement in your building?
That’s just what we’re covering in this article!
Let’s dive into how exactly to create the kind of PTO that is a true partner in making your professionals goals a reality.
Get Organized
In order for the PTO to help you, you first need to help them.
And the very first thing that you can do to help your PTO is to help the organization get organized.
The stage of the PTO doesn’t matter here.
All PTOs can use some help getting organized, no matter if it’s brand new, just getting off the ground, or is a little bit in shambles and needs some help to get revived or rejuvenated.
The primary way to help infuse the group with the needed organization is introducing systems and processes.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you, as the Principal, needs to be doing this work.
Your plate is already full.
Instead, you can introduce the idea of upgrading the group with systems and processes to the PTO volunteers and leaders.
Documentation
Two examples of the most important methods of PTO organization are event planning and leader debrief documentation.
This will make it so the leaders don’t have to recreate the wheel when planning next year’s special person’s dance or the senior sendoff.
Once documented, all of the details will be listed out.
The new volunteer can just step into the role and take a look at what’s been done and use that as a jumping-off point, rather than having to start from scratch every single time.
The other reason to start documenting things is that the PTO will have better information retention.
This means the group won’t have the volunteer brain drain when the really awesome volunteers that know all the things and kind of do all the things leave, their knowledge won’t also go with them.
Some of the information will be staying there for the next generation of volunteers to use.
Most PTOs don’t have a system for getting the information out of volunteers’ heads and onto paper (or a digital document either).
Budget
The next thing, as far as system-wise, that you’re going to want to get into place is a budget.
The PTO should just not be making things up on the fly.
If they have a pot of money, there should be a plan for how to use that money, as well as any money that comes in throughout the whole year.
Just like a household or a school has a budget, the PTO needs a budget.
It needs to be balanced—well, actually, not balanced out to zero each year.
Ideally, you want to leave some funds to roll over for the next year.
Financial Management
The next aspect is kind of the procedures aspect.
All PTOs need a clearly defined procedure for financial management.
This is to ensure the group doesn’t show up in the news for financial theft.
This happens all the time and it’s really unfortunate how common theft of PTO funds is.
The good news is that there are easy steps you can take as a school leader to lessen the opportunity for theft.
Keep your group out of the news by implementing some financial management procedures.
Again, this is not for you to do as the Principal, but for you to make sure that it’s being done and encourage the PTO parent volunteers to have this at the top of their list to take care of.
PTO Meeting Agenda
The next system to implement is a PTO meeting agenda.
If the PTO meetings are a hot mess, no one is going to want to come.
They’re going to be miserable for you to go to, and they’ll be miserable for everybody else to go to as well.
Eventually, parents will stop going to the PTO meetings altogether.
That means that there won’t be enough decision-makers in the room to be making good decisions that are balanced, that work for the entire school community.
It’ll be a small little niche group that is making decisions, and that’s going to have long-term negative consequences for your school community.
It’s going to turn the PTO into a clique if it’s not one already.
Communication Matters
The next thing that you need to make sure is working really well is your communication with the PTO President.
You as a Principal should be meeting and communicating regularly with the President.
If you’re not, if you don’t have a good relationship, if it’s strained in any way, you need to take steps to rectify that right away.
They are your main point of contact, main conduit to the PTO.
Now, the President doesn’t have sole decision-making abilities for the PTO.
They’re going to be taking everything back to the PTO board and having a discussion amongst themselves, but they are your main contact.
So, you need to be fully leveraging, and fully using that contact.
Understand the PTO’s Role
Third thing is that you need to understand the role of the PTO.
The PTO is not the school’s slush fund.
The PTO is a separate organization, a separate entity that has goals and hopes and dreams of its own.
And they are not just the money generator for your school.
There are other things that the PTO should be providing.
If they are only used as a cash cow, one, that is missing out on a huge opportunity for you and the entire school community.
It’s being disrespectful to the value of the parents.
They have so many other things that they could be adding in to the richness of your community.
Really, they are a partner for improving the entire school community.
So, it doesn’t mean just partnering financially; it means that parent volunteers have other time and talents and skills you can and should leverage and welcome readily.
Understand the PTO’s Limits
The fourth thing that you need to understand when you’re looking to develop that vibrant and active PTO in your school community is what the limits are of the PTO.
The parents who are volunteering are just that—they are volunteers.
They’re not employees.
They’re giving of their free time, which you will find that the busiest volunteers actually have no free time because they’re so busy doing all the things.
Usually, PTO volunteers are not just doing PTO.
They are also working on community foundations and community boards.
Along with the fact that the parents are volunteers, know that they’re coming in with probably and getting no training from the PTO because, again, the information isn’t being retained and passed along.
It takes someone to really formalize the whole process, write documents, create those systems, create those procedures, and most volunteers just aren’t able to do that.
PTO volunteers are coming in to their roles without the training or resources they need to do their jobs.
This is really unusual in a school setting because virtually everybody else there, from the school leaders, Principals such as yourself, down to the custodians, they’re all getting trained.
Even the lunch monitors, they’re getting some level of training to do their jobs.
The same is not true for PTOs.
Volunteers are learning on the fly.
And so, a little bit of grace goes a long way.
What’s more, they really don’t have access to resources to support them in their roles either.
The resources they do have are really limited to whatever prior volunteers have had taken the initiative to create or to find on their own.
That really leaves a lot of volunteers in the lurch because they simply don’t have what they need to effectively do their jobs.
This is where so much of the chaos associated with some PTOs comes from.
A Quick Solution
The lack of training and resources one of the reasons why I wanted to create a solution for PTOs and schools who want more meaningfully involved PTOs so that they can leverage them for family engagement.
Transform your school’s parent engagement with the Powered Up Parent Engagement System.
This isn’t just a resource bank; it’s a comprehensive, all-in-one platform designed to elevate your PTO, Booster Club, and all parent groups.
Provide your volunteers with the exact tools and training they need, tailored to their specific roles.
Watch your parent groups thrive and your school community flourish.
All of the systems and processes highlighted above are included in the Powered Up Parent Engagement System, so it’s a great option for busy Principals looking to equip and empower their PTOs and their volunteers.
And it provides not just the tools for PTO volunteers to effectively fill their roles, but there’s training too.
Watch this
Over to You
Building an active and vibrant PTO is not something that happens by chance.
Intentionally focusing on supporting the PTO is a key aspect and is just as important as implementing systems and processes to organize the group.
Use the above guidance to grow and sustain a happy and healthy PTO for your school community!
Another Resource You’ll Love
Tired of feeling like you’re playing catch-up with your school’s parent group?
Wish you could better leverage it to boost family engagement and strengthen your school community?
The Principal’s Parent Group Playbook is your essential guide to building, improving, or completely transforming a struggling parent-teacher organization into a thriving, effective force.
You know how crucial parent groups are, yet your professional training didn’t cover how to best manage or support them.
You dream of a true partnership with the group, but understanding how they work feels overwhelming, and figuring it all out on your own is simply not an option.
This playbook solves that problem.
It combines a high-level overview of how parent groups operate with engaging activities that reinforce key concepts.
Each chapter ends with actionable strategies you can implement immediately, whether your group is brand new, ready to level up, or in desperate need of a refresh.
This isn’t a dense manual covering every detail of running a parent group—that’s a job for the volunteers themselves.
This book gives you precisely what you need to know, explaining why it matters and empowering you to forge an authentic, powerful partnership that helps your entire school community succeed.
Get your copy of The Principal’s Parent Group Playbook here.
