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The transcription discusses the involvement and impact of the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) in a school community. It highlights the key community partners, cultural appreciation events, inclusion of student and family voices through surveys and activities, leadership support, and the positive impact of parent involvement on student outcomes. The main lesson is accepting and embracing all parents for their contributions to the school community, ultimately benefiting everyone involved. I'm going to ask you a few questions about the parent-teacher organization, a PTO. What is the PTO to you and how did your involvement with it begin? As you 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, but 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. I can't necessarily pull out a name, but I know the parents who have businesses tend to be very generous if they're supporting 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 the money, whether it's donating food. Yeah. What leadership strategy is supporting 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. So 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 sustaining. Great. And 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. I think that's an important vital part of the PTO is getting the parents involved in the school is one of the most key aspects of student success there is. Okay. And 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've seen, 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 the 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.