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PTO Grants: It's the most wonderful time of the year!
12.14.2018PTO Grants: It's the most wonderful time of the year!
The Metcalf Laboratory School PTO collaborates with classroom teachers in a unique way to assure that our students have the best educational experience possible. Kyle Black, serving his second year as PTO president, explained that Metcalf’s unique teacher grants program started years ago as a way to help fund innovative teaching ideas when the resources or materials were not available. The PTO is careful to distinguish between teacher needs (materials that can and should be provided by the school or parents of the classroom) and teacher wants (materials that will help make the classroom’s learning experience even more amazing than it was the year before).
Soon after teachers return to school in the fall, the PTO shares their grant application. It is a simple form including: items to purchase, cost, how materials will be used and how the proposal will benefit the students. The grant committee, made up of two teachers, the principal, the PTO president and 2 parents, meet to review all requests. PTO members love getting a glimpse into each teacher’s classroom and learning about their dreams for the coming year. It is helpful to have administration and teachers participate in the grant discussions and provide clarification or feedback.
We ask teachers to make a wish, and we try to fulfill these wants.
We ask teachers to make a wish, and we try to fulfill these wants.
Historically these grants were awarded in the spring of each year, but the PTO recently determined that fall would be a better time. Teachers have had the summer to refresh, work on their curriculum and dream big. Moving the grant application timeline to the fall didn’t change the number of applications, but it did affect the vision of the applications. Black notes, “The requests made in the fall have been more forward thinking and less a replacement of used or aging materials. This has been a neat transition.”
It feels like a different mindset.
It feels like a different mindset.
PTO grants can fund just about anything, yet they try to avoid awarding duplicate items year after year. Grant funding has funded instruments, t-shirt printing press, cameras, laser printers, a trailer outdoor education and even a playground among many, many other things.
Black emphasized that these PTO grants are made possible by the parents of our school. PTO membership fees do not cover this program, parents understand that school fundraisers are the magic that make these grants possible. It all comes back to parents participating in fundraising events (Metcalf Montage, Winter Festival and restaurant fundraisers) so the money can go back to our classrooms and make our school even more amazing than it already is.
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