Last winter, my colleague Kim Scott and I went on a number of school tours through out the District. These visits resulted in a number of motions.

One such motion was to “Request the Superintendent invite all of the PTO groups in Lowell to a city wide PTO sandbox meeting. The purpose would be to share ideas that work to increase parent involvement and enrichment for children and to come up with ideas to help build PTO involvement in under served and under-represented schools.”

The reasoning behind this motion was that not every school in the district had PTO’s and of the many that do exist, we saw an opportunity for our existing PTO’s to be able to better collaborate both in ideas and resources .

Tonight, the first ever Citywide PTO Sandbox took place with healthy attendance of parents and school staff alike (approximately 60 were in attendance). Prior to the start, PTO’s and parent liaisons were able to create displays and give out information. As I perused the displays and spoke with these fantastic women, I was struck by their obvious dedication to our kids and also appreciative of the blood, sweat and tears that go into making things happen at a grass roots level at each of schools each day. H/T Ladies! Continue reading →