A group of about a dozen Boulder Elementary School parents is working to form a parent-teacher association for the school with the goal of offering a variety of extracurricular events and fostering closer involvement between families and the school.
Samantha DeWit, who has two children at the school and two more who will attend in years to come, said she was moved to start a PTA in Boulder after seeing how the organizations positively impacted her children’s schools in the Bozeman area, where they lived before moving to Boulder about three years ago.
“I feel like Boulder misses out on a lot because it doesn’t have one,” she said, adding that her kids love science and missed the PTA-organized science fairs at their previous schools. She said she contacted Superintendent Jeff Elliott about starting a PTA, “and he was like, ‘Yeah, I’d love that.'”
To help launch the group, the parents are having a bingo and chili night in the school’s gym 5–7 p.m. this Friday, May 20. For more information, contact boulderpantherpta@gmail.com.
Elliott, a Boulder native raised by two local longtime teachers, said that Boulder doesn’t have as many resources for families as other areas, which means that “the school always provided that stability.” He cited a disconnect between parents and the school that was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which paused many in-person events and kept visitors out of schools. As the school moves beyond the pandemic, he said, “we’re really wanting to open up our school and do more for parents.”
DeWit, too, noticed a gap between families and the school, observing that “there’s kind of a stigma at the school that it’s not as open as people would like it to be.”
“There’s that void that Jeff was talking about where parents don’t really feel involved with the school,” she said. “There’s not really another avenue to be really connected with the school.”
The PTA, they hope, will fix that. After getting Elliott’s enthusiastic support, DeWit said, she contacted a few friends with kids in the school and she posted in the Facebook group “Everything Boulder Montana” seeking volunteers. She quickly found about 12 parents willing to volunteer to launch and lead the group, which she said will soon be incorporated as a nonprofit. The PTA will be part of the state- and national-level PTA, she said, meaning that a $6 Boulder Elementary PTA membership includes membership at those levels, too.
Christine Glueckert, whose daughter is in kindergarten at Boulder Elementary, said she and DeWit were talking about something else when DeWit mentioned starting a PTA. Glueckert, who grew up in Texas and moved to Montana with her Helena-native husband, was immediately interested.
“I was like, oh my gosh, I’d love to do that, because my mom was huge in the PTA when I was a kid,” she said. “From kindergarten to eighth grade, my mom was in it to win it.”
Beyond fundraising and accepting charitable donations to offer extracurriculars, Glueckert said, the heightened parental involvement that PTAs foster often gives kids an added sense of security and comfort at school.
“I just remember growing up, my mom was always at the school, she was always around, people knew who she was, and there was a lot of security in that. There was always somebody with the PTA we knew. It was a comfortable, safe space,” she said. “I want my daughter to feel the same way, I want her to feel like when she goes to school it’s like a second home, because, ‘Oh, my mom’s here,’ and all the other moms and dads are involved.”
Elliott expressed a similar vision: “That’s a big part of what we’re trying to do. We want families to get involved, we want to help families, we want to be a resource for families.”
