PTA VISION, MISSION & VALUES
PTA VISION
- To make every child’s potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children.
PTA MISSION
- To make every child’s potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children.
PTA VALUES
Collaboration
We will work in partnership with a wide array of individuals and organizations to broaden and enhance our ability to serve and advocate for all children and families.
Commitment
We are dedicated to children’s educational success, health, and well-being through strong family and community engagement, while remaining accountable to the principles upon which our association was founded.
Diversity
We acknowledge the potential of everyone without regard, including but not limited to: age, culture, economic status, educational background, ethnicity, gender, geographic location, legal status, marital status, mental ability, national origin, organizational position, parental status, physical ability, political philosophy, race, religion, sexual orientation, and work experience.
Respect
We value the individual contributions of members, employees, volunteers, and partners as we work collaboratively to achieve our association’s goals.
Accountability
All members, employees, volunteers, and partners have a shared responsibility to align their efforts toward the achievement of our association’s strategic initiatives.
Winter 2023 Meeting Schedule
Held either In person or on Zoom. Check your official PTA email for the link OR email norfolkpta@gmail.com
For each meeting, we will host a PTA Clinic at 6:30 p.m. This Clinic is an informal session for local units to ask questions, get help, meet other PTA leaders. The regular PTA Council meeting will start at 7 p.m. PTA Council meetings are open to all Norfolk PTA officers, committee chairs, and administrative designees.
Feb. 1*
Feb. 16
*Zoom Meeting
Three key benefits of being part of the PTA community
Information
PTA offers email newsletters that keep members up-to-date on the latest grant offers, program updates and advocacy alerts. PTA members know and are prepared for what’s happening in education around the country.
Guidance to Run Your PTA
Running any parent group can be challenging and sometimes overwhelming. Only PTA offers a Back-to-School Kit and an e-learning webinar library to help PTA leaders become trained and prepared to serve their communities and manage local PTA units. Unaffiliated parent groups do not have this vast set of guides, sample templates and tips to use in their school.
Networking
Need help figuring out a problem at your child’s school or want to spread a great idea around? You’ll be able to interact with like-minded parents at district, state and national PTA functions.
Why PTA Matters
It’s important to know that many of the decisions that impact children’s education are not made by educators at their schools. These decisions frequently come from district, state or federal officials. According to the 2012 U.S. census, there are 114,991,725 households in the United States, but only 33,763,140 contain children of school age (age 3-18). This means that less than 30% of U.S. households have children in school—and over 70% do not.
So, when issues affecting children and schools are discussed, families with children need to join forces with teachers and school administrators to be heard, because there is a good chance that the people making the decisions (politicians, school board members, community leaders, etc.) do not live with children. PTA has the ability to use our collective voice to share real-life experiences about what it is like to raise a family today—or go to school—with the critical decision-makers who may not have that perspective. If they don’t live with or know about today’s challenges, how can they clearly see tomorrow’s solutions?
PTA gives parents a united and powerful voice, a seat at the decisionmaking table and the tools to influence change that will better the lives of all children.
Unaffiliated parent groups by design do not have this type of influence on their community, region, state or at the federal level. The ability to speak for every child with one voice is the Power of PTA.
PTA offers the unique benefit of being part of a larger system of support. When a PTA is present, there’s stability and common good for the entire school community.
