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The Detroit school district is considering recognizing parent organizations that operate independently from the state and national Parent Teacher Association.
The proposal, introduced by the Detroit Public Schools Community District during a Feb. 26 board committee meeting, came after members expressed frustrations over reported dysfunction and conflict within some local PTAs last year. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said during a June board meeting some PTAs have had challenges with “proper implementation of elections” and “following protocols.”
Board Member Monique Bryant told Chalkbeat this week the proposed policy would create better balance by allowing parents to choose what works best for their individual schools.
Some school communities may not have parents with the time or bandwidth to formally organize and run PTAs, she said. A better option for some parents may be to join an organization overseen by the district’s Family and Community Engagement Department, or FACE.
The proposed policy amendment could mean that formal parent engagement ends up looking different from school to school. It would recognize independent, locally organized parent-teacher organizations, as well as other parent organization models approved by FACE. The proposal would also clarify the voting model all organizations must rely on: Each year, every school would vote on the type of parent organization model it wants to use and submit results to district administrators.
The proposed amendment follows incidents of mismanagement by two parent-teacher organizations reported by the district’s Office of Inspector General over the last seven years.
The National PTA is a nationwide volunteer-led organization with state and local chapters, which organize to fundraise, plan educational events, and advocate for students’ needs. PTAs are self-governed, separate entities from local school districts.
DPSCD’s current policy only recognizes the PTA as its “official parent organization of record” for its schools. There are multiple Detroit PTA councils that oversee school-based chapters in the district.
The board has not yet voted on the proposed changes.
Tonya Whitehead, president of the Michigan PTA, and leaders of several Detroit PTA councils did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But Whitehead said during public comment at a July committee meeting that state and Detroit PTA leadership provided support and additional training to local chapters to address the issues raised by the board and Vitti.
“We are committed to continual improvement within our organizations, including streamlining processes to improve response time, providing additional training to members and PTA leaders at all member levels, and working together with the FACE office to improve two-way communication and behavior problem solving,” she said at the time.
Board members did not discuss the policy when the district introduced the proposal at the February committee meeting. However, members called for change at multiple meetings last year.
Bryant said she complained last year about the handling of a PTA election at Cass Technical High School. Bryant, who is a Cass Tech parent and was a member of the PTA, said the organization did not follow its bylaws when it took nominations for new leadership. The result was that PTA’s entire executive board was reelected before their terms were up, said Bryant.
The Cass Tech PTSA — which also includes students — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bryant added she contacted the Michigan PTA with concerns, but the organization was unresponsive.
“I don’t think we should be moving forward with individual schools still trying to have elections after this,” she said during the June meeting.
Detroit brought back PTAs to ‘heal the divide’
When the state appointed an emergency manager to take control of Detroit Public Schools in 2009, PTAs were removed. That emergency management ended in 2016, and PTAs returned to district schools after Vitti began as superintendent in May 2017.
“We set out to try to heal the divide that was between the community and schools – one of the ways that the board and I thought best to do that [was] bring back the PTA,” said Vitti at the July committee meeting.
Whitehead said during public comment of that meeting that DPSCD staff “were closely integrated in trying to start units in every school in the district” when emergency management ended.
She said their efforts “included collecting dues and being listed as the contractor for PTAs in district documents,” which resulted in “incomplete paperwork” and made it appear that PTA concerns should be directed to district staff.
“Post-pandemic, PTA, in cooperation with the FACE office, has been working hard to end those practices and ensure that adults engaged with PTA and the district know the difference between the roles and responsibilities of each,” she added. “But there is more work to be done.”
Vitti said it is challenging for the PTA “to monitor elections, ensure the training and capacity of officers once they’re elected, and problem-solve through conflict between officers at certain schools.”
Conflict over policy arose at PTAs beyond Cass Technical last year, Bryant said. For example, PTA members at two schools complained it was unfair that school staff who were also parents of students at their school could become executive officers of their PTA, she said. Bryant did not identify the two schools.
Mismanagement of parent organization funds were found in previous years by the Office of Inspector General, or OIG, which serves as an independent oversight office for the district.
In 2019, the OIG received complaints the PTA committee of a district school mismanaged fundraising proceeds. Because the PTA did not properly document the amount of funds raised, the OIG investigation could not determine how much money was reportedly missing.
The district mandated cash management training for all PTA officers and fundraising organizers as a result of the OIG’s recommendations stemming from its investigation. Detroit schools also began requiring PTAs to submit financial statements after every school-based fundraising event.
In 2022, the OIG found that a parent organization improperly retained funds for a school field trip, and also reported a lack of district oversight of support organizations. The OIG recommended the parent group pay an outstanding bill of more than $7,200. The OIG also recommended better collaboration between district offices to improve donation tracking, as well as internal controls for parent support organizations.
However, board members did not mention those two incidents when they shared concerns about PTAs, and Vitti did not address them. It is unclear whether they contributed to the district’s decision to introduce the proposal in February to change how parent organizations work.
“I think the issue has been the PTA has not been able to demonstrate the capacity … to work within the district at the scale that we operate at, because we’re so much larger,” said Vitti in July.
Vitti said the PTA needed to expedite its response to issues at individual schools and improve its communication with the board.
Some board members raised the option of letting individual schools decide whether to continue their PTAs or start new organizations, a choice that’s included in the new policy proposal.
“Instead of creating a one size fits all approach … we might be looking at individual schools that seem to have repeated problems, which is high level conflict, move away from that and run it at the district level in order to create better balance,” said Vitti.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.