Word: pta
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Keys believes that the secret to educational improvement is getting adults more involved in their kids' schools. But he admits that making every PTA meeting is tough for parents who juggle two or three jobs. So in 2001, Keys, along with educational software company EPOS, launched Helping Involve Parents (HIP), an interactive program that allows parents and teachers to form their own communications network via the telephone or Internet. It's now used by 34,000 students and parents in 29 schools throughout New York City. The software program allows parents to view homework assignments, class schedules and student performance...
Counselor Georgine Brown-Thompson remembers "empty PTA halls" before introducing HIP to Walt Whitman Middle School 246 in Brooklyn three years ago. "We've seen PTA attendance rise from five to 164," she says. The school was on the brink of financial ruin in 2001 when 127 parents opted for student transfers under the No Child Left Behind legislation. "Our school was being left behind," Brown-Thompson says. After HIP's introduction, 110 parents changed their mind, saving the school $1.3 million in funding it would have lost if the students had left...
...clear, the problem so dire, the financial problems so enormous, can we not address it?" she asks. Her detractors call her the Food Nazi behind her back--to which she replies serenely, "I prefer czarina, not that they'll understand the difference." The sniping about lost revenues from PTA bake sales and vending machines just leaves her exasperated. "Are we going to sell marijuana to build gyms?" she says, relishing the hyperbole. "Well, the health-care consequences of this food are that...
Early skeptics, from principals to PTA moms, are coming around to Combs' point of view, but it hasn't been painless. Richardson High School, north of Dallas, had to shut down its profitable Eagle Emporium, which sold candy that paid for VCRs in every room as well as sheet music for the choir. "As sad as I was to lose the money," says former PTA head Pat Epstein, "we don't need to be stuffing our kids with bad food." At Haggar Elementary School in nearby Plano, principal Vicki Aldridge mourned the loss of the Donuts for Dads events...
...next 20 minutes, Knowles sounded like a proud parent boasting about his son’s accomplishments to a group of neighbors at a backyard barbecue or PTA meeting...