On the Job Training

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

I used to be a politician. I ran for office, paid my $50 filing fee, and agonized over how to design simple advertising signs which included my name and my hoped-for elected position. All totaled, I spent $75 dollars. Opps! Make that $76. One of my children donated a $1 to get me started. I won by 95% of the vote. (Since, in the end, my only opponent withdrew, I’ve always been curious about who that other 5% voted for?)

I have several close friends who are also politicians. One is currently the president of a school district Board of Education, and another is the mayor of Utah’s eighth largest city. How’d we get our start? Not from back-door, smoked filled rooms with strategy-makers and policy advocates. We all joined the PTA.

When Daughter #1 entered first grade, a neighbor talked me into paying for a membership—it was cheap, and I figured I could show up at a meeting or two in support of my student. It wasn’t hard either. I helped with Teacher Appreciation Day dinners, supervised a booth at the school carnival fund raiser, aided teachers in my kids’ classrooms, and met lots of talented moms and dads whose hundreds of volunteer hours keep schools humming along smoothly.

You learn a good many unexpected things from volunteering at your local school. Before my friend became the mayor, she worked her way up the ranks in a school district until she was the Region PTA President. Under her careful supervision,  she completely revitalized the organization. Turning it into a more effective machine to help support her district schools, she saved the organization from a “downhill” trend according to the former Superintendent. It was an invaluable primer on how to run her city whose citizens recently voted a 98% satisfaction level with their local government.

Through her PTA work, my other friend, the school board president, became a recognized state expert on School Land Trust Funds. Millions of dollars are set aside every year to be funneled into schools across the state. PTA watchdogs see to it that the money isn’t siphoned into legislators’ pet projects which may or may not have anything to do with education. Her volunteer expertise made her a respected advocate for students on the Hill and earned her the statewide PTA Friend of Children Award.

Over the years I, too, learned a myriad of useful things from my PTA service, including—among others–how to raise funds, a skill way beyond my comfort zone. PTA funds on the local level help support classroom projects, field trips, teacher appreciation days, and even can provide for students with exceptional needs.  I organized the sales of magazines, stuffed animals (which sold surprisingly well to the families of pre-teens), and blankets with school insignias. I remember walking into RC Wiley Corporate offices one morning and asking if they’d like to donate some new furniture to our school library. Seven days later, a moving van showed up in the Kearns Jr. High parking lot and unloaded several high quality chairs and a sofa which invited student book-browsing for many years thereafter. Another day, the CEO of Smith’s handed me a check for $500 dollars without evening verifying that I was really our local middle school president. He trusted the PTA.

What I didn’t expect to learn was that PTA is also essential in the face of tragedy. In January of 1987, a 12 passenger commuter plane collided with a small plane lifting off from Airport II. There was a horrific explosion in the sky over Kearns. Sirens began wailing. I remember holding a baby in my arms and rushing to my living room window to see what caused the thunderous blast. All but one of my children were in three nearby schools, part of the seven school boundaries which I later discovered were the fallout area from the two-airplane collision. Elementary children were on playgrounds at recess as deadly projectiles of metal and body parts fell from the sky across the debris field. A total of 10 people on board both planes were killed.

The sheriff’s department swung immediately into action, locking down all schools and cordoning off a multi-mile disaster area. Son #1 and some of his high school buddies were recruited to help locate wreckage and isolate body parts from onlookers. In a nightmare come to life, one of Son #1’s friends discovered a grisly head lying atop a nearby garage. A jet engine fell on the lawn within a few feet of a Kearns High social studies classroom. A student at our middle school walked into the office with a finger he’d picked up off the soccer field.

PTA volunteers already in schools helped teachers kept students from hysteria. Many unable to get to schools used calling trees to notify parents their students were safe, created human chains to blockade areas from curiosity seekers, and formed carpools to get students home once the sheriff called a halt to the search because of darkness. It was only much later that we parents learned that the impossible had happened: not a single child or educator was injured.

There are many unlikely paths to becoming an elected representative of the people. Most take huge sums of money and the formation of uneasy alliances with other political groups. But PTA volunteers tackle community problems on a daily basis; they generally have no complicated agenda or financial motivation. They just want to help kids learn. Not a bad platform from which to run for political office. Not bad at all.