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The speaker discusses their involvement with the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) at Tapestry school, first as a staff member then as a parent. They highlight the role of parents as key community partners and the inclusive cultural events organized by the PTO. Student and family voices are included through surveys and invitations to participate. Leadership strategies involve support from the administration and former leaders. The impact of parent involvement on student success is emphasized, and the importance of accepting and embracing all parents within the school community is highlighted as a key lesson. I'm going to ask you a few questions about the Parent Teacher Organization, or PTO. What is the PTO to you, and how did your involvement with it begin? Sure. Okay. Well, when I started at Tapestry, I started as a staff member before I brought my kids over. My first introduction to the PTO was as a staff member, first teacher. It was as someone who's kind of benefiting from the PTO, so I got to see the fun days, the t-shirts, the staff appreciation things. Later on, after my kids were here, I was able to kind of experience it as a parent, where there's the various PTO groups where we can kind of chat about grade-specific things. I was able to kind of connect more with other parents, and be able to experience the school as a parent, which is kind of hard to do when you are on the teacher side of things. It's hard to be able to really be involved in your kid's school as a teacher, while also working at the school. Great. Who are the key community partners within the PTO? The primary community partners are, of course, the parents. The parents come from all different walks of life. Some are more active, some are less active. So those are the key community partners. We have, of course, our PTO presidents, our former presidents, who are still very active. As far as partners who might be businesses, I know that there are many local businesses who are involved in our PTO, and will donate time and service, and I can't necessarily pull out a name, but I know the parents who have businesses tend to be very generous with their support of those businesses. Yeah, that's right. You started to touch on this, but what cultural wealth or community assets do you think are being honored by the current PTO? We actually, I feel, do a very good job of that as a PTO. We have our community days. We have our cultural appreciation days, centered around Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, various other cultural months and appreciation days. Our PTO does a great job of pulling our community members who are part of those cultures and ensuring there's a school-wide celebration of the cultural differences. They'll bring food. They'll bring clothing, decorations. It's a lot of fun, and I love how involved our parents are. Awesome. This really works with the previous question. How else do you think student and family voices are included? I, as a parent, get a lot of surveys from the PTO. I get a lot of offers for my opinions. I get a lot of invitations to this action day or that action day, requests for everyone to be involved, whether it's giving your time, whether it's giving money, whether it's donating food for various events. Great. Yeah. What leadership strategies have supported this work? I know that the post of president and some of the other positions change occasionally. Can you repeat the question again? What leadership strategies supported this work? I think there's support for PTO from the top down. Our administration is involved in it. They encourage our teachers to be part of it, and they heavily encourage our parents to be part of it. But then also, it seems like even beyond the leadership structure, there's former leaders in our schools. There's people whose students have moved on who are still heavily involved in the PTO organization. It seems like leadership, though, it might be fleeting and we might elect different people different times. It seems like the idea of leadership is more sustained. Great. What impact has the partnership had or could it have on student outcomes? I think we've seen through all kinds of research that the biggest predictor of student success is parent involvement. An important, vital part of the PTO is getting parents involved in the school is one of the most key aspects of student success there is. Okay. The last question I have for you is what lessons can others take from the story of our PTO, how it operates, how you've seen the involvement over the last several years? I think the biggest lesson is taking people as they are and taking what they're willing to give. I'm thinking of specific parents who came kind of reluctantly to join the PTA because I think they had been looked down on because of socioeconomic factors, things that were beyond their control. And I've seen throughout just a year, year and a half that they've been here just blossoming, joining everything, feeling more comfortable, talking to other parents. And I think that it's important to realize that parents are part of the school community and putting them in the cornerstone part of the school community can only make things better for everyone. Awesome. Thank you so much for your insight. I really appreciate it. Thank you.