Advocacy
What Is Advocacy?
Advocacy is using your voice and your experiences to help create positive change for children, schools, and communities. It often begins by sharing a concern or telling a story and then turning that experience into a specific request—such as a change in policy, additional resources, improved training, or stronger support for students and families.
For more than 120 years, PTA members across the country have worked together to identify important issues, share information, and advocate for programs and policies that help children thrive.
PTA is a nonprofit, noncommercial, nonsectarian, and nonpartisan organization. Our volunteer leaders and members speak on behalf of children and families and work to promote laws, policies, and practices that support the education, health, safety, and well-being of every child.
Advocacy can start close to home. When a parent or caregiver speaks with a teacher, principal, or school administrator about a concern or an opportunity for improvement, they are already advocating for their child. That same voice can also make a difference at the school district, state, and national levels.
Through PTA, parents, caregivers, educators, and community members join together to raise awareness, share their experiences, and work toward meaningful solutions that help students succeed.
Pennsylvania PTA advances this work by educating families, building awareness around issues that affect children and public education, collaborating with organizations that share our mission, and communicating directly with school leaders, policymakers, and elected officials at the local, state, and national levels.
Every voice matters. When PTA members speak together, we can turn individual concerns into collective action and lasting change for Pennsylvania’s children.
Pennsylvania PTA Legislative Committee
Pennsylvania PTA Legislative Committee is appointed by the Pennsylvania PTA President and chaired by the Legislation and Advocacy Chairman. The committee’s primary responsibility is to review PTA’s Legislative Program and make recommendations to the state board of managers and other PTA leaders.The committee also works to increase PTA members’ participation in advocacy opportunities in Harrisburg as well as in local communities. The committee achieves this in a variety of ways.
Ø Action Alerts/E-Blasts – When immediate action is needed to effect change on legislative issues, Pennsylvania PTA sends out action alerts to its members. These time sensitive e-mails highlight legislation moving through the legislature that will affect issues important to PTA members.
Ø Writing and Reviewing of Resolutions – Resolutions are official documents outlining the opinion, will, or intent of the association to address problems, situations, or concerns that affect children and youth and require statewide action to seek resolution in the issue. The state PTA’s Legislation and Advocacy committee’s responsibility is to review PTA’s resolutions and make recommendations to the state board of managers and other PTA leaders. The state PTA has adopted hundreds of resolutions on a wide variety of state education, health, and safety issues since its first convention. Over the past two years, the state PTA resolutions committee has submitted several new resolutions for consideration, including Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System (PVAAS), Privacy of Student Records-Military Recruiters, Sun Safety: Skin Cancer Prevention Measures at School, Pay-To-Play School Programs, The Importance of Early Care and Education On School Readiness, and Homework. In 2006, Pennsylvania PTA submitted our School Health Council Resolution to National PTA for consideration. The National PTA Board approved it for convention 2006 and it was adopted by the National PTA Convention delegates in June 2006 without question! Making this a Pennsylvania PTA first!
Times and issues have changed over the past century, but the idea of advocating for children statewide has not—Pennsylvania PTA is alive and well!