A Message from National PTA…

Support: The Stuff We're Made Of

We often point to all the tangible benefits of membership as reasons to join, and stay with, PTA®.  There certainly are quite a few of them: from 501(c)3 status to insurance to the huge number of  online and print resources available―free―for parents and leaders and anyone else who wants to support the education and health of children.  But training, tax exemptions, and Take Your Family to School Week Awards have never been the real reason why people joined PTA.  We join because we want to be part of a community, one that accomplishes so much on behalf of our kids.

Everywhere you look these days, you can see a need for stronger communities.  We have an economy that is forcing millions of capable workers without jobs to rely on their families, friends, and neighbors just to survive.  We have profoundly heartbreaking surges in youth violence that beg someone, anyone, to intervene.  We have schools graduating fewer students and dropping more critical classroom and technical learning opportunities.  After 113 years of bringing together families, schools, and communities, it's clear that the PTA family has never been needed more in America than right now.

The PTA family works on behalf of every child in our country.  You can see it when we go to Capitol Hill to help pass better child nutrition laws and when we go to the White House to work on volunteer initiatives that encourage more people serve their school communities.  But we work on a local level, too.  In states and counties across the land, PTA is the one promoting parent involvement, helping school boards and parents come together, and the only ones with staff motivated not by profit, but by a mission to help your children achieve.  We are more than a magazine, more than a chat room―we are literally in your hometown whenever you need us.  The PTA family is a genuine network of support, made up of real people you've seen with your own eyes and who have helped you with their own hands.  Support: That's what family is for, and what makes our communities healthy.

The solution to so many of our problems can be found by people simply engaging one another: not just online, but in homes, schools, cities, and statehouses.  That's how we can help our children, and where we'll find the incredible strength we'll need to be successful in our mission.  I am proud of your efforts and look forward to engaging everyone in our PTA family. Thank you!

Charles J. “Chuck” Saylors
PTA National President

Michigan PTA - 3300 Washtenaw Avenue, Suite 220 - Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
Email: director@michiganpta.org - Website: www.michiganpta.org - Phone: (734) 975-9500