Supporting Hispanic Students' Success

Webinar: Supporting Hispanic Students' Success

 

When: Sept. 15, 2016
Time for webinar in Spanish: 1 p.m. EST—Register Now
Time for webinar in English: 7 p.m. EST— Register Now

 

Twenty-five percent of students today are Hispanic, and Hispanic children and youth are the fastest-growing population in America. We know that Hispanic and Latino parents want the best for their children and want to be engaged, but there are cultural and language barriers that make it challenging. 

 

As Hispanic families head back to school, it is important they are equipped with tools and resources to help their children start strong and stay on track to success.

 

In this webinar, you will:     

• Gain knowledge of the impact of family engagement on student success and ways to support Hispanic and Latino children's learning and development in school, at home and in the community.
• Learn how to advocate for a quality and equitable education to ensure that every child has the opportunity to reach his/her full potential. 

Moderator:   

• Geronimo M. Rodriguez Jr., 2015-2017 National PTA board member

Speakers:

• Margaret R. (Peggy) McLeod, Ed.D, deputy vice president, education and workforce development, National Council of La Raza and White House appointee as a member on the board of directors of the National Board for Education Sciences
• Jo-Ann Rullan, director, community empowerment initiatives, Univision Communications Inc.
• Adriana Flores-Ragade, partnership director, social impact, Univision Communications Inc.

Questions? 

 

Contact Armen Alvarez, National PTA multicultural membership development manager, for more info.

 

It is a top priority of National PTA to ensure all families in all communities are welcomed, supported and engaged in their children's education, which is proven to make a difference for student success. Univision Communications and Common Sense Media are key allies in our efforts to better serve and reach Hispanic families.

 

Download the Spanish version of this invitation and share with your Spanish-speaking audiences.

 

Lysol Helps Parents and Teachers Create a Healthy Classroom

Lysol Helps Parents and Teachers Create a Healthy Classroom Source: National PTA One Voice Blog Implement Healthy Habits for a Successful School Year Did you know that 38 million school days each year are missed due to influenza alone[1]? When children miss school, they miss out on valuable social and educational moments. Teaching children healthy habits like proper hand washing at an early age has been shown to reduce student absenteeism and illnesses in families[2]. When kids practice healthy habits like proper cough and sneeze etiquette, they are less likely to spread germs around the classroom and less likely to bring them home. That’s why the National Parent Teacher Association has teamed up with Lysol and the National Education Association (NEA) to spread the word about healthy habits, starting with changes you can make at home. You can implement healthy habits into your children’s routine in a few easy ways: Teach Proper Hand Washing Techniques: One of the most effective ways to help stop the spread of germs is washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water. To ensure children are washing for at least 20 seconds— the amount of time needed to kill and remove germs —encourage them to sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice while rubbing their hands together to keep track of time. Share Healthy Habits, Not Germs: Teaching healthy habits to your children at home can start a broader movement around keeping germs at bay. By demonstrating healthy habits at home, such as regular exercise, eating a balanced diet and disinfecting germ “hot spots” (especially light switches, door knobs and countertops), parents are encouraging children to share their knowledge with their peers. Those peers share with their friends and the cycle continues. Support Schools One Clean Surface at a Time: Lysol and Box Tops for Education have partnered to promote healthy habits and support schools across the U.S. by providing classroom disinfecting products eligible for Box Tops redemption. Encourage teachers to add Lysol Disinfecting Wipes, now eligible for Box Tops redemption, on their school supply lists to help kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses on commonly-touched surfaces around the classroom. It’s an item that both moms and teachers can proudly stand behind! Visit Lysol.com/HealthyHabits for more information on the Healthy Habits Program. Rory Tait is the marketing director at Lysol. He drives the Lysol Healthy Habits campaign, a program focused on educating parents across the country on the importance of healthy habits and good hygiene practices. [1] CDC. “Vital Health and Statistics. Current Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 1996.”; Published October 1999 [2] Meadows, Emily, and Nicole Le Saux. “A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Antimicrobial Rinse-Free Hand Sanitizers for Prevention of Illness-Related Absenteeism in Elementary School Children.” BMC Public Health. Published November 2004

Raise Funds for Schools

National PTA and Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. Renew Collaboration 

to Help Raise Funds for Schools and Communities

ALEXANDRIA, Va., (Aug. 24, 2016)—National PTA and Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. are pleased to announce a continuation of their collaboration, which provides fundraising opportunities to local PTAs across the country. National PTA and Schwan’s Home Service first joined forces in May 2014 and share a commitment to making a difference for families, schools and communities.

“PTAs have a real impact on children, families and education—from supplementing classroom lessons with activities that make learning fun to ensuring students have a healthy and safe environment in which to live, learn and thrive,” said Laura Bay, president of National PTA. “National PTA is thrilled to continue our collaboration with Schwan’s Home Service for a third year to support local PTAs in raising funds that help schools improve and communities grow and prosper.”

For more than 60 years, Schwan’s Home Service has been delivering high-quality frozen foods right to families’ doors, making it easier to create delicious home-style meals. Schwan’s Home Service, through the Schwan’s Cares™ fundraising program, helps schools, sports teams and other community groups raise funds online by ordering from Schwan’s Home Service, Inc.

Through National PTA and Schwan’s Home Service’s collaboration, Schwan’s Home Service will:

• Contribute 20-40% of each total purchase to a buyer’s preferred school for all purchases made through a PTA campaign on the Schwan’s Cares™ Fundraising Network platform for the first 45 days. Additionally, after the initial campaign period of 45 days, schools earn 5% on purchases made during the next 90 days.
• Offer PTA members a new-customer discount of $10 off of $50 on their first Schwan’s Home Service order.

“By providing meaningful resources and programs, National PTA continues to find ways to truly impact schools and communities,” said Dave Muscato, president of Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. “We are proud to continue our relationship with National PTA for a third year to provide a seamless fundraising option for PTAs nationwide. We believe all schools should have the opportunity to raise the funds they need to provide the necessary resources to our nation’s youth.”

For more information about the fundraising opportunities and discounts available to PTAs and PTA members through Schwan’s Home Service, visit PTA.org/Benefits.

About National PTA

National PTA comprises millions of families, students, teachers, administrators and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of family engagement in schools. PTA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit association that prides itself on being a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who wants to be involved and make a difference for the education, health and welfare of children and youth.

About the Schwan’s Cares™ Program & Schwan’s Home Service, Inc.
The Schwan’s Cares™ program is offered by Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. in communities nationwide with the purpose of supporting the fundraising efforts of thousands of schools sports teams, communities and causes. In addition to National PTA, it also partners with the National Sports Center and its signature global youth soccer event, Schwan’s USA CUP.

A subsidiary of The Schwan Food Company, Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. markets and distributes more than 300 top quality frozen foods. Popular product lines include the company’s signature ice cream, pizza, choice meats, seafood, ethnic specialties, breakfast items and desserts. Based in Minnesota, Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. has more than 400 localized sales and distribution centers across the continental United States. Visit Schwans.com or call (888) 724-9267 for more information.

Media Contacts:

Heidi May Wilson, National PTA

(703) 518-1242, hmay@pta.org

Tarsha Rice, Schwan’s Shared Services, LLC.

(952) 832-4325, tarsha.rice@schwans.com

Children's Defense Fund Article

Back to School

As a new school year begins, parents, teachers and administrators are all thinking about how to make it the best year ever. One of the keys to student success sounds very simple but can make a profound difference: making sure every student is in school every day. This is not the case in many schools and school districts across the country. The Department of Education estimates that five to seven and a half million students miss 18 or more days of school each year, or nearly an entire month or more. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a school year for any reason. As part of the President’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative, the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice have joined together to launch Every Student, Every Day: A National Initiative to Address and Eliminate Chronic Absenteeism. I was honored to participate in their national symposium to share what the Children’s Defense Fund has learned since our first report in 1974, Children Out of School in America. We found from examining census data that at least 2 million children were out of school for at least 3 months, including 750,000 between 7-13 years old. But there was no clear information on who they were or why they were out of school — so we knocked on thousands of doors in a variety of census tracts across our country to find and ask families why their children were home and not in school. We learned that the large number of 7-13 year olds were children with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities. Another large group were children pushed out by discipline policies who never returned to school. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, we found children who had recently migrated from Puerto Rico staying home when it got cold because they had no winter coats. In a rural Maine community we found children who couldn’t afford the local school district’s transportation fees and were unaware that the state would reimburse the local district for transportation costs. In other states like Kentucky the key barriers were book fees. We wrote: “If a child was not White, or was White but not middle class, did not speak English, was poor, needed special help with seeing, hearing, walking, reading, learning, adjusting, growing up, was pregnant or married at age 15, was not ‘smart enough’ or was ‘too smart,’ then, in too many places, school officials decided school was not the place for that child. In sum, out of school children shared a common characteristic of differentness by virtue of race, income, physical, mental or emotional ‘handicap,’ and age. They were for the most part, out of school not by choice but because they had been excluded. It is as if many school officials had decided that certain groups of children were beyond their responsibility and were expendable. They excluded them arbitrarily, discriminatorily and with impunity.” We’ve made enormous progress since then, especially for students with disabilities. After our report on Children Out of School in America, CDF and others worked together to push Congress to pass legislation that for the first time gave children with disabilities the federal right to a free, appropriate public education. But we haven’t solved the children out of school crisis. Children on the margins remain at greatest risk for some of the same reasons we documented more than 40 years ago. A recent National Public Radio story on absenteeism featured Johns Hopkins scholar Robert Balfanz, who studies chronic school absenteeism, and a high-poverty elementary school in Baltimore making strides tackling the problem: “[Balfanz] has studied high school dropouts for years, and in his research he kept seeing a red flag: chronic absences in elementary and middle school. Students who miss a couple days a month fall behind in reading — and if they can’t read, they can’t pass tests. ‘To miss a month of school when you’re 11 and 12, there’s got to be something behind that,’ Balfanz says — and at Wolfe Street Academy, there was. ‘The list included things like tooth decay, mental health issues, and not having a winter coat.’” The Department of Education sees chronic absenteeism as: “a primary cause of low academic achievement and a powerful predictor of those students who may eventually drop out of school.” Chronic absenteeism is not to be confused with the problem of children being truant from school. Often when a child skips school, he is labeled as a discipline problem and ends up being suspended or expelled and sometimes even referred to law enforcement for action. We must prevent suspensions and expulsions for truancy. I have never understood why we put a child out of school for not coming to school instead of finding out why the child is not in school. The Department of Education is now collecting the right data and doing something about chronic absenteeism by promoting ideas we know work. One common sense idea goes all the way back to our days of knocking on doors: More school districts are starting each morning by having staff call or visit every family whose child is absent from school to find out why. Others also connect with families as the school year begins. Some schools are making strides connecting eligible but unenrolled children with health insurance as they enroll in school, allowing those children to get the regular care they need to stay healthy and ready to learn. Some are partnering with health clinics to allow children to be treated on-site for chronic conditions like asthma that contribute to days of lost class time and which can now be addressed in a few minutes out of class. The Children’s Defense Fund and AASA, The School Superintendents Association, have partnered with school districts for more than a decade to develop a simple system that works. A new toolkit, “Happy, Healthy and Ready to Learn: Insure All Children!” to be released later in August, captures the lessons learned and provides resources for school districts to create their own programs with community partners. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is partnering with the Department of Education to promote housing stability for families so children aren’t kept out of school when they move frequently and lack necessary school records. Wraparound services also help keep children in school. Wolfe Street Academy in Baltimore, for example, provides a box of donated coats and other clothes in the cafeteria and like other community schools, provides mental health and dental services and a wide range of programs encouraging parents to get involved in their school community. Many schools provide mentoring services to make sure students feel supported, nurtured, and encouraged to be there. The simple truth is every child needs to feel welcome at school and know that they will be missed by someone at school if they miss a day. Schools must make learning engaging and fun and always keep the children at the center. Those are the schools every child will look forward to going to every day. Click here to share your comments and find out what others are saying. Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go towww.childrensdefense.org. Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.

A New School Year, a New Education Law

Source: National PTA One Voice Blog A multi-ethnic group of elementary age students are sitting at their desks working on an assignment. Their teacher is sitting with them and is answering any questions they have. A new school year comes with new people to meet, new material to learn and new expectations. This year, it also comes with a new education law—the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Across the country, states and districts are crafting new education plans that will guide the implementation of ESSA. The process of implementing the law presents an important opportunity for families and PTAs to help shape the future of education for our nation’s children. Under ESSA, parents are required to be “meaningfully consulted” during the development of the new education plans. To empower families and PTAs to be at the table and active participants in state and local implementation of ESSA, National PTA has developed a wide range of resources at PTA.org/ESSA. In addition to these resources, National PTA recently hosted a webinar to delve into the specifics of how parents and PTA members can and should be involved in the implementation of the new law. The webinar showcased two incredible PTA advocates: Kelly Langston, president of North Carolina PTA, and Otto Schell, legislative director of Oregon PTA, both of whom have been heavily involved in the ESSA implementation process in their respective states. They shared how parents and families are critical to making sure that state and local education plans meet the needs of all students. Jessah Walker, senior federal relations associate for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), also gave a state education leader perspective on ESSA and reiterated the importance of having parents and families as partners in the implementation process. As the new school year gets into full swing, here are three quick things you can do to make sure you are ready for ESSA: Read “What Does this New Law Mean for My Child?” This resource is designed to give parents a basic understanding of what ESSA will mean for their children. Check out what your state is doing to implement the new law Visit National PTA’s website and find your state to see the latest resources, events and news about the ESSA implementation process and ways to get involved. Advocate for your and every child PTA members are leading advocacy efforts at the school, district, state and federal level to ensure better educational opportunities are provided for all of our nation’s children. This school year, let’s continue to build upon our 119+ years of advocacy by working with school and state leaders to help every student succeed. National PTA encourages every parent and family to lend their voice to the implementation of ESSA. To learn more about what you can do to get involved and help improve education for your child and every child in your community, visit PTA.org/ESSA.

Volunteer With Your PTA - Questions?

Looking to Volunteer With Your PTA, But Have Questions?

 

National PTA E-Learning offers interactive and engaging online courses to help youbecome a better leader! Learn the steps for taking a program from concept to reality with our Running a Successful Program e-learning course. This course will guide you in the creation and delivery of innovative PTA programs in your local school community.

 

If you are having difficulty keeping volunteers motivated, learn how to put an achievable plan together with Planning Your PTA Year. This course will set you up for a successful PTA year by assisting you in planning and goal setting.

 

Visit PTA.org/Elearning today to start reaching your full potential!

Marathon Kids

“You know me. I’m the kid who acts up in class. The budding all-star. The bookworm. The kid who gets picked last. I live in East LA. In Brooklyn. I live in Boise, Idaho. And I want you to coach me.     You are not just a PE teacher to me - you are a role model. And you can be my Coach. Help me become a Marathon Kid.”

We think you’re pretty inspirational. We know you change lives in your school community. In fact, the below video was inspired by and for you and educators in your community. Marathon Kids and Let’s Move! Active Schools are on the hunt for future Coaches at schools in your district to take kids on a 104.8-mile journey. They’ll set goals, track their miles, learn how to fuel their bodies. They’ll earn exclusive Nike rewards. They’ll watch you - their role models - choose healthy behaviors. And those lessons will stay with them for life.  Now through Sept. 15 , you can apply for a grant to bring Marathon Kids to your school community this year and give your students even more opportunities to be active before, during or after school - at no cost. We’ve got the program, exclusive Nike rewards and support ready. We even have the funding covered. We just need the Coach.

FOLLOW THESE STEPS Whether you want to start Marathon Kids at your whole school or district, or you know of educators who would be interested in starting a club with the class, follow or forward these three simple steps andapply by Sept. 15  to make sure your kids get up and running with Marathon Kids this year:   Download and read the Pre-Registration Packet. (10 minutes) When the portal opens on Monday, apply for the Marathon Kids Active Schools Grant bySeptember 15.  Only applications submitted via the grant portal will be accepted. (10-15 minutes) If your school hasn't already, update your Let's Move! Active Schools Assessment for the 2016-17 school year. (5-10 minutes) Contact programs@marathonkids.org with any questions.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

COACH ME: CLICK TO WATCH WHAT IT MEANS.

New Skills for Youth Survey

Please complete this survey to create more ways for Ohio students to get high-quality training and skills.  

The Ohio Department of Education believes every young person deserves a pathway to economic success. That is why we are pursuing a grant from the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium and JP Morgan Chase. The three-year grant would allow our state to expand and improve career-focused education that prepares students for high-skill and high-wage jobs.

To prepare for the grant application, the department is conducting a survey to gather information from citizens throughout Ohio, including educators, parents, students, businesses and community organizations. We want to learn about the quality of and access to career preparation resources currently available in schools. This includes next steps needed for building programs, courses or other experiences that support career-ready students.

The department will use the information from the survey to create the grant proposal on how Ohio will increase pathways for students to get the training and skills they need to compete for jobs.

Here is the New Skills for Youth survey. We encourage you to participate in the survey and to share it with your family, friends and community. Thank you for helping us in this effort.

Communications!

DID YOU KNOW…

Because of PTA, our nation has...

• Kindergarten as a part of our public school system
• Child labor laws to protect against unsafe working practices and conditions
•  Federally funded hot lunches that feed 26 million children today in our public schools
• A separate juvenile justice system so children won't be tried and incarcerated as adults
•  Labels on music recordings to help parents know which contain “explicit lyrics” 
• TV ratings to help parents evaluate programs

 CONNECT WITH US…

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