The Principal's Parent Group Playbook

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Christina Heideck. Christina is a former attorney and a professional organizer with a keen sense for developing systems to simplify and ease management of the most complex situations. With over 15 years of PTA volunteer and leadership experience, Christina knows what it takes to run wildly successful PTA and PTOs. She runs an international 8,000-member Facebook group for school parents group volunteers and leaders, and it's her mission to make life easier for all volunteers, parent leaders, principals, and school leaders. And she is the author of the new book, The Principal's Parent Group Playbook, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:50] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:54] SPEAKER_01:

Christina, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:55] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I'm so excited to talk with you, Justin.

[00:58] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm excited to talk with you because you've done something that has not been done in a very long time, which is write a book for principals about essentially how to work with parent groups. Tell us about that. What led you to this point where, you know, obviously you had a lot of personal experience leading parent groups that work in schools. What led you to write a book for principals?

[01:17] SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's actually never been done before. To be really honest, I was on another podcast last fall, and we had a fabulous conversation with two hosts. And at the end of the interview, one host said, this really should be a book. And I was a little surprised because I've never thought about writing a book. I mean, I wrote a lot when I was working as an attorney, and now I have a very healthy-sized blog with many, many articles north of 300. So there's a lot of resources there already.

[01:49]

But compiling all of the information... Like kind of downloading it out of my brain and then taking all of my experience from the last 15 years was not on my radar. It just hadn't occurred to me because I'm not one to necessarily toot my own horn. I often tell people I don't like being the center of attention unless I have a microphone and I'm on a stage.

[02:10]

I enjoy that, but don't enjoy necessarily having attention other times. So I just didn't think about it. But then I thought, if not me, then who? And this is really information that needs to be out there because too many principals and school leaders are not enjoying the opportunities that school parent groups present. And they're missing out and they're missing out professionally, but their school communities are missing out. And so what better way to give everybody what they need than to write it all down in 200 some odd pages and say, here you go.

[02:46]

Here's a nice little summary of everything. You just take this and run with it.

[02:51] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Christina, most of the topics that we feature here on Principal Center Radio have had numerous books written about them. But you found when you did some research and considered writing a book that really there were not any books out there for principals on how to work with parent groups. Is that right?

[03:06] SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And it was really shocking to me, but actually not surprising at all because the number of principals that come to me with questions and even in my own experience of working with the school leaders in my children's building, some understood the assignment. so to speak. And some had never even picked up the book to understand what was going on. And so when I was considering writing the book, I did do some research and say like the most recent book was at the turn of the century in the 1900s. And it was called The PTA and Its Work or The Parent Teacher Association and Its Work.

[03:44]

So really thrilling, thrilling topic that really pulled you in there. And I didn't get a copy of it because things have changed just a little bit. So I don't really need to consider this a true competitor. I don't really need to worry about distinguishing myself because I think the last 120 years have done that for me with all the changes in education. I guess that leads me to another point. The parent groups that are operating in schools now are not your mother's PTA.

[04:12]

So even if... Your understanding of a school parent group is that they just run bake sales and like to put on class parties. That is an outdated vision and model for school parent groups. Just as our education has changed since the time that you were a student in K-12, PTOs have grown up too.

[04:33]

And so they can serve different functions. They can be leveraged differently to help support the principals and the entire school community in ways that a lot of people haven't even considered, which I think is like super sad.

[04:46] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, let's talk about a little bit of that vision for that partnership, because I think as a school principal, you know, you experience a range of sentiments from parents ranging from, you know, complete absence. You know, we have some people who are just very, very hard to get a hold of and, you know, don't want to help with anything. And on the other end, you have people who maybe want to help too much and want to have their fingers in too many pies. And, you know, like there's a there's a full range and yet there's a good medium. And I think we don't always know how to kind of optimize for the right things. So in your mind, what constitutes some of the key features of the ideal relationship between a school administration and the leaders of the parent group?

[05:27] SPEAKER_00:

I like to call it an authentic partnership. So to be authentic, I think you have to be open and willing to hear from others, willing to collaborate and understand what each side is going through so that one of the utilities of school parent groups for principals is to take those over-ear parents that you described and And give them something to do that actually helps you. Like you can actually suggest that. And it's not going to be seen as micromanaging if you do it in the right way. You can really frame it as this is what I need your help with. And this would be great if you do this.

[06:09]

And leading them to the water where you need them to be is going to serve you. And you're not going to be just giving them busy work because that will be snuffed out in a hot minute. But you're going to be giving them something that's really going to impact your school community. So you're going to be turning something that is heavy, that's weighing down on your already very full plate of things to do. And you're going to be taking something off by giving those parents something to do that really helps you in the end.

[06:40] SPEAKER_01:

And do you have a way of deciding what a good something for them to do is? Or are you kind of open-ended on that? Does it kind of depend on the circumstances?

[06:47] SPEAKER_00:

I think it really depends on the circumstances. Like you have to look at what your school community needs. For example, I always look at test scores because that's such a common thing. So let's say you're in an elementary building and your reading scores just came back and they're lower than you want them to be. Well, why not approach a school parent group about starting a reading program where the kids are incentivized to read a certain amount and they get recognized for their reading minutes. And then at the end of the month, they get a little fun little award and it gets celebrated.

[07:19]

And then at the end of the semester, you roll that into, you know, twice a year, you have like a big celebration for the kids who participated at a certain level. And it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be time consuming. That's the exact program that my elementary school did that the PTA sponsored for the school. It was a K-3 building. And it was called the Star Reader Program.

[07:44]

And each kid could buy a T-shirt. And then if they completed their reading minutes per the month, the minutes were age appropriate, right? So kindergartners were reading much less than kids. third graders, they would get an iron-on star for their shirt. And then in December and again in May, there was like a special assembly for the kids who were star readers. And guess who benefited?

[08:06]

All the kids because they were reading more. And so it really helped support the educational aims. But it was something fun for the kids. It's like you can take that program idea and tweak it to whatever you need it to be to improve your school.

[08:21] SPEAKER_01:

Christina, one area that I think all school principals are interested in receiving some help from parent groups on is fundraising, right? We would all love to have more resources. And of course, the ability of our parent group to raise money is going to vary quite a bit from school to school. Take us into some of your thinking on fundraising as a function of parent groups and what that means for principals.

[08:43] SPEAKER_00:

I think it's a necessary evil. And I think fundraising is best approached when the school and the parent groups are working together. I've seen it done both ways. One where the school approaches the parent group and says, this is what we'd like to do for the year and this is how much it's going to cost. Can you help us out with it? I've also seen where this always happens with people who are unfamiliar with the culture of how we do things and how there is a collaborative environment.

[09:11]

This was after my children had already moved on up to higher grades. But in the upper elementary, there was a whole set of brand new administrators who were unfamiliar with how we rolled. And they decided to do separate fundraising that competed with the PTO. Well, guess who? Yes. Everybody earned less because that's just not the best way.

[09:35]

So if there are financial needs, if there are additional resources that the school needs, I think it's really best to work with the PTO. And if you really do need to have a separate fundraiser because you either don't have a good working relationship with the parent-teacher organization, or maybe the parents aren't up to the task because they don't have the training, and that's a whole, we should start that and come back to that on the whiteboard, about the lack of training, then you need to do some things to make sure that you're not competing. So you need to look at what the parent group is already doing and do something different as far as like the fundraising concept. So maybe they're doing a traditional catalog fundraiser where they're you know, it's candles or cookie dough or gift wrap or whatever. Maybe you do more of an event where you have a magic show and people buy tickets to that or do it, just something totally different.

[10:26]

And then also you have to pay attention to the timing so that if the PTO has their annual carnival fundraiser, February every year, you're not doing a fundraiser in January and preempting it because whether you understand this or not, parents who are not tuned in do not understand that it's this part of the school fundraising versus this part of the school. So a lot of times the PTO's efforts are interpreted as being the school's efforts, even though they're separate and distinct organizations, there's a lot of crossover. And so you have to be mindful about the timing and about the fundraising concepts because the parents will be confused. There's so much information out there and confused people don't buy. And they're going to be like, why is the school always having its handout? Like that's going to be the next question.

[11:17]

So it just is better to get on the same page early with the school parent group and figure out a plan that works for everybody.

[11:24] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that communication and working together is so critical. And you also mentioned an issue that I think is relevant on both sides, both for administration and for parent volunteers. And that is training and just bringing people on board and letting them know kind of how we do things here, what the culture is. And looking back, I'm very grateful to the parent community in the school where I was principal because they did a great job of that. They told me, hey, here are the events that we typically do. You know, we'll run everything by you, but like we pretty much run these events.

[11:55]

You don't really have to do anything or here's what we need you to do for this. I think I sat in the dunk tank most years. They brought me a wetsuit and that helped because it was Seattle and it wasn't exactly warm. But, you know, I really appreciated the way that they brought me up to speed on everything that was unique to our community, right? Like, I'm not going to learn in my principal certification program the specific traditions of the parent community. And I found that in a lot of cases, that parent community outlasted the administration, right?

[12:21]

As an elementary school, we might have parents for 10 years. depending on how many kids they have and their ages. And administrators often don't stay 10 years. So there's a constant need on the parent organization side to bring along a new generation of leaders and teachers turn over less slowly, but certainly bringing the school staff on board. And then for the parent groups as well, there's turnover, there are term limits, there are new people coming in and people moving on. How do you think about those issues of education and informing people?

[12:51]

Because I've personally been in a lot of meetings where somebody shows up once and talks real big, but those are not the people who get things done. You know, it's the people who stick around. How do we set them up for success?

[13:03] SPEAKER_00:

I think it starts by showing up. My high school last year had a brand new administrative team. The principal that was there before actually passed away mid-year, which was really disruptive. And the rest of the administrative team just actually left the district. Only, I think, one transferred to a different school. So it was super disruptive for everybody and really sad, of course, because he was a really awesome principal.

[13:26]

But the new crop of principals didn't understand that they should be coming to the meetings, even though they had been told they didn't get it. So they did not show up the entire year. And the PTO came to kind of resent that. And now this year, the administration had some ideas and we were like, no. How about that? We're going to wait and see if you follow through because you didn't even understand that you needed to come.

[13:51]

And at the end of the year, the head principal had made the comment like, well, I don't even know what's going on with the PTO. And we're like, because you didn't come. So it starts with like coming to the meetings first and then listening to the parents to understand what their needs are. But I think a big issue is that there's an assumption that just because someone has a title in a PTO that they also have training or resources to go along with that. And in most cases, that's not the case. I think the issue is because the PTO is such a unique organization and the volunteers are so different from anybody else in the school that you'll meet.

[14:32]

Everybody else has training. Like the custodians know how to keep up the building and do some basic maintenance stuff. The school cafeteria people know how to prepare meals and accept payments. The teachers have a lot of, you know, so much training. Parent volunteers come in with whatever life experience they have before. It could be really good.

[14:52]

Maybe, like me, I think I'm well-suited to being a parent volunteer because I'm a recovering attorney. So I like to get things done. I like systems. I like order. I encourage using bylaws and following the rules and making sure everything's fair. But some other people don't have that, and they have a different style that is more chaotic, less organized, and can be challenging for school leaders who...

[15:19]

really don't want to bear witness to a real-life episode of The Housewives.

[15:25] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if you have any advice for principals who feel like maybe they are on the set of a reality TV show sometimes, because certainly there can be big personalities, there can be conflicts, there can be leadership conflicts. I think I witnessed at least one attempted coup in leadership that thankfully did not succeed, and we always had a good relationship with our parent organization. But there can be some drama. What have you seen on the drama front, and what advice do you have for principals?

[15:48] SPEAKER_00:

I don't enjoy drama because I don't have time for that. I have way too many other things. And this is, even though sometimes I've acted like it throughout my tenure as a PTO volunteer, it's never been my job. You know, it is volunteer. And so my friend, we all joke because a lot of my friends, we've been volunteering together for 15 years and we're all getting to the stage where our youngest are graduating. And so we'll say, you know, we PTO so hard.

[16:19]

It's like our full time job, even though we're not getting paid for it. Anyway, limiting drama starts by you showing up and really setting the tone. And I think it can be tricky because it depends on who is misbehaving. If it is the president, then you really need to pull them aside separately and really have an open and honest conversation. I talked about authentic being an authentic partner. And part of that is dealing with conflict as it comes up, not brushing it aside.

[16:48]

If you're going to support drama, trauma, as I call it, then you're not going to go far in your career, in my opinion. But I think the primary relationship with the parent group for the principal should be with the president because it is hard to manage everyone. And the president, while they're not in charge of everything, they are the like ringmaster where they should be knowing about all the things, even if they're not doing all the things. So their role is very similar to the principals who, again, can't be doing all the things, but certainly needs to know about all the things and needs to be orchestrating and have a familiarity and does not like to be surprised about what's going on in their building. So I think having a conversation with the president about it and seeing what support they need. I've seen some principals who have taken the tactic of, we're just shutting down the PTO for three months.

[17:41]

That is one way to do it, but that's a really good way to gut confidence and destroy that relationship because the parent volunteers are not children. Even though they might not be acting as they should, they are not children. So you should not treat them that way because it's going to lead to they're not ever going to trust you. It's going to be really hard to work with someone if there's not that trust and confidence that they're being treated with respect. So to limit the drama, I think you just need to show up and just set the expectation. Like it kind of just depends on all the different levels.

[18:16]

This last year, there was a situation in another parent group in my community where the president and the treasurer were not getting along. And it escalated to the point where the president had purchased some things on behalf of the PTO. And instead of going through the right procedure of submitting a reimbursement request, she walked down to the bank and withdrew the money from the PTO's bank account. You can't do that. You just can't because that's not how things are done. So there was a meeting the next month and the issue was brought up and there was a motion to remove her from office because you can't do that.

[18:53]

That's stealing. You have to go through the proper channels. And the principal, I'm sure, was not happy to be at that meeting. But I think things got pretty heated, what I heard after the fact from attendees. And the principal just had to put her foot down and be like, we need to resolve this right here with a vote, and then we're going to move on. And so having the principal there with their authority and the respect that they bring can really diminish some of the drama and the misbehaving.

[19:26] SPEAKER_01:

Very well said. And I appreciate your comment that the PTA president or the organization president plays an important role in interfacing between the organization and the school. So certainly that relationship is a critical relationship.

[19:40] SPEAKER_00:

Well, it really saves the principal when the principal and the president have such a strong relationship. That saves a lot of work for the principal because they're not having to interface with everybody else. And so it all can flow through one person. You gain a closer relationship with them. You know, with the principals that I've had the best relationships with, we all had like we exchanged cell phone numbers. kind of close to the beginning because sometimes there are things that cannot go on the record, usually to protect the principal.

[20:12]

Like I can't get fired as a parent. Like they can't kick my kid out of school just because, you know, something happened. But there have been several occasions where But not all like nefarious. There was only one issue that I thought, oh, this should not go on regular channels. Every year, the PTA sponsors a Founders Day program and selects two recipients of a Lifetime Achievement Award to honor their service to children. And the PTA units in the school district will each pick a staff member and then also a community member.

[20:44]

So it could be someone from the community or a PTA parent themselves. And so this particular year, the staff member that was being honored was the custodian, and he was the head night custodian. And so he had requested to his boss, which was not the building principal, but it was somebody in the administration, like the central office, he had requested to have the time off. Well in advance of the ceremony, like it's kind of a big to do. It's a lifetime achievement award. Like people get dressed up.

[21:14]

There's like a whole dessert reception and we embarrass people with all the love that we shower on them. And it's people hate it, but they also love it at the same time. It's one of those kind of events. I call it like PTA prom because it's the one time when everybody gets together and we all acknowledge the efforts of the PTA units and the contributions to the school over the last year. So anyway, this custodian had requested the time off. His boss had denied it and said, oh, you can just jump up on stage in your work uniform and then go back to like cleaning the bathrooms and stuff after this.

[21:47]

And that was such a slight to the PTA because this particular administrator had actually been he was the immediate past principal of the high school. So he very well knew what he was doing and what he was saying. I had a text relationship with the custodian because we were in the building doing athletics concessions. So we often needed things. And so it just made everyone's life easier if we had, we could say, hey, Tony, can you come unlock gate A or whatever for us? Because we have some keys to the building, but not all the keys to the building.

[22:18]

And so I was like, hey, are you excited for tonight? I'm so excited. I have something special. you know special plan for you because there's always like an introductory embarrassing talk that we give to like I said to love on people tell them all the things that they don't want other people to hear about how wonderful they are and he goes yeah but there was an issue I couldn't get the whole night off and so he kind of briefly explained it to me well then that was my cue to text the principal and not email him because putting that on record could have been awkward for him And the building principal was hopping mad and then communicated with the custodian and said, no, no. I'm going to veto what the other administrator had said. You absolutely have the night off.

[23:03]

Go home, get changed, bring your wife and kids and enjoy the night. And that's what ended up happening. But that's the only time something like that has happened. But there's other things like, you know, maybe you have a scheduled PTO meeting and the custodians forget that. to open the building and maybe you don't have keys to the building at every building only the high school because things are on a bigger scale there and we're coming with athletics concessions it's you know It's like six times a week sometimes. So anyway, we had different access to the building and different needs for support.

[23:37]

So it's just generally helpful, I think, to have that kind of relationship and to know it's going to be like the PTO presidents take that seriously and they're not going to be distributing your cell phone number willy-nilly.

[23:51] SPEAKER_01:

Christina, I know you have quite a few resources, not only for principals, but also for parent group volunteers and leaders. Tell us a little bit more about what people will find on your website and let people know where that is online.

[24:02] SPEAKER_00:

You can find all of the goodness at ptoanswers.com. And there are blog posts. So there's a ton of free resources. I have resources specifically designed for principals and teachers, as well as parent leaders, because all three of those stakeholders have different needs when it comes to understanding and knowing about how parent group, how they work, about how the specific...

[24:29]

And that's one of the reasons, again, why I wrote the book, because principals have such a unique need for they need to know a lot about PTO, PTOs and PTAs, but they don't need to know everything because that's just too much. And they're busy. And I'm the daughter of a teacher. So I understand like everything. just how much the commitment is and all of the demands that are placed on educators. Yeah, you can head to ptoanswers.com.

[24:56]

And then I have a family engagement opportunity assessment for principals so that they can see maybe where are, like, this is especially good for principals who do not have a group or do not have a parent group that is working for them. This will help identify the areas for improvement and improvement There's even an answer key because I made it just like a school assessment. So you can look at the answer key and find out next steps. So principals can grab that for free at ptoanswers.com slash principals. And then for teachers, I have five no-brainer ways to improve the teacher-parent relationship.

[25:33]

And they can get that at ptoanswers.com slash teachers. If you don't want to pay attention to all these URLs, you can just go to ptoanswers.com and under the freebie section, You'll find about a dozen different freebies. There's one for just about every topic. And my book is, there's a link to that too.

[25:53] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is The Principal's Parent Group Playbook. Christina Heideck, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[26:00] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much, Justin.

[26:02] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.