Redefining the PTA Mom: Pandemics and PTA: The Impact of COVID and School Shootings on the Role of the PTA (Poster 10)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 4:55
  In Invited Poster Session: 2024 AERA Undergraduate Fellows Research Poster Fair

Abstract

The present study answers the questions: post-COVID and in an era of mass shootings,
how do parents understand the role of the PTA within their schools, and how does that
understanding impact their school-based involvement? The present research illuminates parents' perceptions of parent-teacher organizations, the benefits perceived by their participation, the accessibility of these groups, and, ultimately, how PTAs have changed in response to school
safety protocols. The answer to these questions has implications for how educational inequalities
are perpetuated in schools. Utilizing 20 semi-structured interviews with middle-class Latinx
parents in San Antonio, Texas, this study finds that in a post-Uvalde and pandemic context, the
role of the PTA has expanded. This expansion has implications for parents’ involvement in
non-PTA-related activities. According to parents, PTA members have privileged access to all
parental involvement opportunities, not just those conventionally run by the PTA. Parental
involvement opportunities have become capped for safety reasons, and PTA parents are given
privileged access. The benefits of involvement typically garnered by middle-class parents are
thus limited due to the PTA’s expanded jurisdiction. Therefore, despite some parent's desire to get involved in their children’s education, the perceived structure of the PTA has made involvement less accessible.

Author

• Serena Levin, Brown University