Nearly every PTO communicates with their respective families via some kind of email lists. Several use Constant Contact, while others use Google Groups or other software/services.

Communication Goal: One of our goals as an NPS? TAC? is to provide a good set of tools that all PTOs can use, if they choose, to communicate with their families and teachers. The advantage to having multiple PTOs use the same tools/platform include: avoiding duplicate service fees and making it easy for parents to see the wide variety of school-related newsletters to which they could subscribe.  This way, a family with kids at Ward, Bigelow and North could not only subscribe to their respective newsletters from one page, but also subscribe to the School Committee newsletter and others. 

Long-Term Solution: We believe we can implement the CiviCRM set of modules on the Drupal? platform to provide a district-wide set of functionality, including maintain family information for PTO directories, making it easy for families to sign-up for mailing lists throughout the district and enabling list administrators to keep those lists secure and to communicate effective with their list members.

Short-Term Step: We have created a Constant Contact account that currently maintains email lists for the following organizations: 

• Ward Elementary School PTO (www.wardpto.org)
• NPS Tech Advisory School (www.npstac.org)

Sign-up for these lists here.

If you think other organizations might be interested in consolidating their lists into this account, please contact Erik Britt-Webb at communication@npstac.org.