Focusing Your Group and PTA Fundraising Inequities

Hi Friends,

Lots of things happening, so no reading material from me this week. Maybe share with the group what has been helpful or insightful to you lately?

First, the March for Racial Justice is this Saturday. I would love for you to join me. The website is https://www.m4rj.com if you have questions about details or logistics. Please come!

Second, thank you to everyone who responded to the survey! We have 10 responses so far and here’s what you have said:
Education/Schools — 10
Policing — 5
Development/Housing — 7
Voting/Elections — 3
Environment — 1
Parenting/Raising Kids — 9

We can definitely focus our future meetings on the most popular items, especially since the top three overlap so nicely.

Third, I’d love to hear from those of you with primary or secondary school children about your experiences so far in your schools’ PTA(s). I attended the local county-wide PTA meeting last night and learned quite a bit. One of the things we can all push in our respective schools is for the PTAs that do very well with fundraising to consider contributing to a collaboration initiative, which collects money from the PTAs that donate and then distributes grants to those schools that don’t have the same fundraising power for specific projects/needs. It just started last year and the more interest and support it gets, the more successful it will be in starting to address the inequities in our school system.

A group member has been working on ways to talk to friends and family who are pretty overtly racist, especially ways to discuss the issues without shutting it down. Has anyone else had success with these kinds of conversations? If you have, would you be willing to share your thoughts/experience with the group?

Thanks for reading!