The PTO Information Technology Group is charged with building and maintaining the PTO public web site and the PTO-sponsored school email lists. It is also responsible for the administrative data systems which support those projects as well as providing data for the PTO volunteer coordinators and the school directory.

The PTO’s IT group is working to use available technology to assist the PTO in performing its mission: to support the parents, teachers and students at Burns Park and to foster the school community. The IT group’s contribution generally falls into two categories: enhancing the PTO’s efforts to communicate with, and enhance discussion within, the school community; and making it easier for PTO volunteers to work effectively.

Enhancing communication

The IT group sets up and manages the email lists for all the classrooms at Burns Park, along with an all-school mailing list and other special purpose lists. We began this project in the 2005-06 school year, building on the success of the previous year’s introduction of "communication parents." With mailing lists hosted by the PTO, using the popular open-source Mailman software, parents and teachers in all classrooms have access to a fully functional mailing list system.

Visit here to see all the mailing lists hosted by the PTO. You must be a parent, faculty or staff of the school to join the lists; most parents are subscribed to the proper lists automatically at the beginning of the year.

We maintain the main PTO web site (which you are currently viewing), which will eventually include more detailed information about PTO programs as well as key resources for parents, teachers, and students. Based on the open source Drupal content management system, our new site combines PTO committee and event information with the Penguin Talk! discussion forum system, a place for members of the school community to share news and advice, and to discuss issues related to the school, the curriculum, or to parenting in general. The discussion forums began their pilot run in the summer of 2006.

Finally, the IT group provides the data for the school directory, and assists with the early stages of its digital production process.

Working effectively

The foundation of many PTO projects is the contact database, which we built in the summer of 2005. Using data collected at the start of each year directly from parents (and when children enroll mid-year), the system provides the PTO with nearly complete, up-to-date, contact information for all the families with children enrolled in the school.

This basic contact information, including email addresses, is used to generate data for the directory and to build all the email mailing lists for the school. Data from family volunteer forms is also entered into the database, allowing us to provide classroom teachers, and PTO committee chairs, with full contact information for the parents who have volunteered to help. This takes the burden of locating volunteers off teachers, and makes it easier for committee chairs to contact and include everyone who has volunteered to help with a project or program.

Our database system, hosted on our web server, makes use of the popular MySQL database management system and a custom web front-end to enter and edit data as well as generate a wide range of reports. Having the system hosted on the internet allows authorized volunteers to access the system from work or home at their own convenience; it also means the system is not dependent on any one volunteer’s computer or operating system.

Finally, the IT group built the online ordering system for the Burn$ Park Buck$ scrip fundraising program. The online system allows families to order at their own convenience, without needing to track down a paper form. We are also running an experiment by offering credit card payment. The system sends order information to the program coordinators and confirmation messages to the families after they place their order. Our current system, which uses a PHP-based web front-end tied to a MySQL database, is slated to be upgraded soon. The new system will use the database to track orders, summarize all orders for the volunteers, and make it easier to ensure all orders are properly fulfilled.