The North Carolina PTA offers trainings and resources to help PTA members reach out to elected officials. To get started, review the following suggestions:
Organize Your Thoughts
- First, clearly identify the issue.
- If the issue involves your school district, carefully review your school board’s policies.
- If you decide to take a position on the issue, and have confirmed that it is within the overall mission of PTA, the next steps can be very useful:
Next Steps
1. Decide who is in a position to help you deal with the issue. Depending on the issue, this might be a principal, the superintendent, the school board or the county commission.
2. Select one or more of your local leaders or members to contact the appropriate individual or group, ask for a meeting to discuss the issue and find a solution.
If it is necessary to learn more about the issue, compile a list of the agencies and organizations that would have the necessary information and ask for volunteers to do the necessary research.
3. If resolving this issue requires the support of your membership (for example, to persuade the school board to take a particular action), you will need to decide the best way to inform your members about the issue and urge them to take action. You may use email, phone trees, newsletters and other means of communication to do this. If you do this, you will need to provide your members with addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of the people who should be contacted (for example, the school board or county commissioners).
4. To give your members the information they need to be effective advocates, carefully prepare an information sheet, which explains the issue and the solution that is supported by your local unit.
5. If this is a major issue in the community, you may want to consider forming or joining a coalition of organizations that share your goal regarding this issue to unite for strength in addressing the issue