At the September Hauser PTA meeting, a committee was formed to study the possibility of converting our Parent Teacher Association chapter to an independent parent teacher organization. In District 96, Central’s parent group recently voted to become a PTO. This is the second in a series of articles discussing PTA and PTO.

The ”National Congress of Mothers” (later to become the PTA) was founded in 1897 by two wealthy philanthropy-minded women who, at a time when women could not vote, felt it was up to the mothers of the country to eliminate threats to the nation’s children. The PTA formed state-level congresses to help carry out the work of the organization. Their early efforts focused on child labor laws, public health service, hot lunch programs, juvenile justice, and mandatory immunizations.

Today, the PTA continues to be primarily an advocacy organization, concerned with promoting legislation, mainly of educational issues (especially public school funding), on the state and national levels. As an organization, its focus is not on school-level parent groups, although the school groups provide the members and funding to support the PTA’s legislative agendas. To encourage the school groups to affiliate with the PTA, the PTA offers benefits to their members, the most important one being affordable insurance at a group rate. (In the past, many parent groups chose to become ”PTAs” rather than ”PTOs” because there was no alternative affordable insurance. Today, comparable insurance is available at competitive prices through other vendors and organizations, like PTO Today.)

How does the PTA determine its legislative agenda? Both the state and national PTAs hold annual conventions, to which member PTAs can send delegates, based on the number of members in a local unit. (To our knowledge, Hauser PTA has never chosen to participate in the conventions.) At the convention a legislative platform is adopted. While few would argue with the PTA’s mission to promote the welfare of children, the difficulty comes in applying this goal to specific legislation.

The Illinois PTA has a Legislative Chair who, like most PTA officers, is an unpaid volunteer. The Legislative Chair reviews the bills introduced in the General Assembly and informs the members of the PTA’s position on those bills. Because the PTA does not have a paid lobbyist, the PTA seldom testifies in committee or even takes official positions on legislation. The PTA’s potential legislative strength lies in the number of parents who are its members, assuming that all those members agree with PTA positions and are willing to contact their legislators. In reality, few members choose to become involved, and some, if they were aware, might not support all of the PTA’s positions.

For more information about the Illinois PTA’s legislative agenda, please see http://www.illinoispta.org/Legislation.html. Information about the national PTA’s legislative priorities can be found at http://www.pta.org/public_policy_agenda.asp.