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Old 10-06-2016, 10:30 AM
 
201 posts, read 235,633 times
Reputation: 179

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So my child attends a highly ranked school in PISD. We love the school overall but we feel overwhelmed by amount and manner of communication from school. I am wondering if this is something specific to PISD or same everywhere.

Here is an example of communication we have received so far from the school:
1. We get green folder with home work and reminder about parent teacher conference. This is the most normal communication out of all.
2. We get so many emails from school about various topics like picture book cover contest, fire safety poster, art work submission (sorry which art?) and many others. These are not like consolidated news letter emails. Sometimes we get three in a day.
3. And then the PTA. Not sure how PTAs are funded but it seems they among the most fund hungry non-profits I have come across. They want to sell you stuff, they want you to raise fund for them, check drives and what not. I am skepticle of actual contribution of PTAs towards education improvements but that's not the point here. It is how they communicate with parents.
4. And then news letters. News letters from school, from PISD and the beloved PTA...

Our struggles are:
1. How to filter important communication from all the spam? The amount of spam is almost equal to what we get in mail box fliers.
2. How do you keep up with all communication in general? Do you act on everything? Do we need to? How much do we keep our kid informed about all these communications?
3. The biggest struggle is that even if you keep up with ALL the communication, you still miss out some!!! They discussed something in a work hour PTA meeting that only three people attended and they assumed everyone knows about it. How do we break into circles of stay at home moms to keep up with information they have?
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Old 10-06-2016, 10:40 AM
 
1,428 posts, read 1,744,796 times
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Why are you getting notifications about what appears to be work for your children? That's the first problem I see. You don't go to school. Your children do. If you're being made to keep track of that, it's not good.
Our kids have only done private school, so I don't have any experience with these large districts and their communication issues. But the PTA thing doesn't shock me. They are always hitting people up for money. I assume if everyone gave voluntarily, they wouldn't have to send so many reminders and requests. Most of them have sort of figured out what it takes to get the donations that will fund the programs they want to fund. Whether you agree with the use of proceeds will dictate whether you donate and how much, but again, you're unlikely to escape these emails.
As to answer how you keep track of it, it doesn't seem so hard. You read each email and if it has something important, you make a note of it. If it's not, you delete and don't think of it again. If your kids need to know this info, they'll hear it in school. It doesn't seem like your responsibility to keep them apprised.
It sounds like you are making too many things your problem instead of your child's.
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Old 10-06-2016, 11:22 AM
 
19,494 posts, read 17,734,425 times
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I'm going to disagree with numbersguy100 on the homework thing. My wife and I became strong proponents of knowing what the kids were working on and checking homework for errors to be corrected by the kids. It sounds very interventionist to many but in the long run it just works.
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Old 10-06-2016, 12:23 PM
 
201 posts, read 235,633 times
Reputation: 179
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
I'm going to disagree with numbersguy100 on the homework thing. My wife and I became strong proponents of knowing what the kids were working on and checking homework for errors to be corrected by the kids. It sounds very interventionist to many but in the long run it just works.
Yes we keep tab on homework completion and quality mainly to establish accountability on kid and teacher. That form of communication is very normal. We are just overwhelmed by other communications.

The problem is over-communication, under-communication and just dis-organization on school and PTA's part.
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Old 10-06-2016, 12:43 PM
 
23,967 posts, read 10,313,645 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lovethisarea View Post
Yes we keep tab on homework completion and quality mainly to establish accountability on kid and teacher. That form of communication is very normal. We are just overwhelmed by other communications.

The problem is over-communication, under-communication and just dis-organization on school and PTA's part.
How do other parents handle this?
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Old 10-06-2016, 12:53 PM
 
5,251 posts, read 6,338,377 times
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Quote:
Why are you getting notifications about what appears to be work for your children?
PISD starts sending all these notifications in kindergarten, with no expectation that kids are able to read them.

I personally handle it by mostly blowing off the PTA and being a fast reader.

I actually don't find it any different than the amount of 'spam' I receive from the company I work for, mostly concerning the same type of stuff (volunteer fund raising, community involvement, etc).

It's on-par with the rest of the modern corporate world.
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Old 10-06-2016, 01:00 PM
 
Location: Austin
7,244 posts, read 21,705,405 times
Reputation: 10013
We have a Tuesday Folder which comes home on, you guessed it, Tuesdays. It has every flyer of information you need for the week. You can also look at the Tuesday Folder online if you rather not touch paper as they scan everything into PDF form and link it there.

The teachers send out a weekly email with class updates for the week. Sometimes it's twice a week depending on the situation. Room moms send out emails for other communication from the PTO (PTA has to pay an association, a PTO keeps all the money), and if there's a class party, and the sign-up geniuses.

Then, we have a district "communications" person who sends out emails about 3-4 times a year, and more often if there are issues in the district. For example, the "Clown" email came out yesterday. We also got notification that chicken pox turned up in the school.

If there's something important, you'll be contacted for ignoring, so just ignore it all and wait for urgent communication if you don't want all the communication.
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Old 10-06-2016, 01:03 PM
 
100 posts, read 179,371 times
Reputation: 108
I find that most of our school emails have repetitive information.

I grab whatever info that I need, put it on the calendar, and immediately delete the email. That is the only way that I can keep up with everything.
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Old 10-06-2016, 01:48 PM
 
1,428 posts, read 1,744,796 times
Reputation: 2732
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
I'm going to disagree with numbersguy100 on the homework thing. My wife and I became strong proponents of knowing what the kids were working on and checking homework for errors to be corrected by the kids. It sounds very interventionist to many but in the long run it just works.
I guess this is why we send our kids to a school that doesn't start doing homework until 3rd or 4th grade. Maybe once they have homework I'll feel differently, but I feel like by that age, you can effectively convey to them the importance of doing homework, along with conveying the general importance of pushing yourself and doing well in school.
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Old 10-06-2016, 02:05 PM
 
11,230 posts, read 9,169,658 times
Reputation: 32246
Sounds like a combination of CYA and not enough real work to do for somebody.

"How can anyone possibly blame me for not knowing about [xxx]? We sent out 1700 e-mails to everyone at a domain ending in .com, .net, or .org!"
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