PTO Presidents' Role as Members of the Crisis Team

The Newton Public Schools has established a citywide crisis team whose tasks include prevention, intervention and response to crisis. The team is led by Margery Daniels, Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Services. The committee includes representatives of community and government agencies in the city of Newton, including a Health and Safety committee representative from the PTO Council (Margaret Hannah).

In addition to the citywide crisis team, each school has a school-based crisis team whose role is also to prevent, intervene and respond to any crisis within that school. The school-based teams are led by the principals of each school with representatives from various core groups within the building, such as mental health professionals, the school nurse, program specialists, and parent representative(s). The parent representative(s) are the PTO co-presidents.

These teams work in collaboration to provide comfort, safety, support and consistency to students, faculty and community members during a crisis situation.

These teams have been trained to use the "Incident Command Model" and remain sensitive to the diversity within our city and provide parity and access representation in order to respond best to needs of all members of the community including those who reside in Boston and/or speak a language other than English.

Each year, the PTO Council Health & Safety committee chair arranges a training session for PTO co-presidents to assist them in fulfilling their role as crisis team representatives. A summary of that training is below.

Crisis Team Training Summary

What is a Crisis?

  • For Adults: disruption/interference in usual steady state
  • For Children: interference that results in suspension of their on-going growth

Examples of crisis in the school:

  • Death of parent, student or staff
  • Onset of war
  • Terrorist acts
  • Natural disasters

Goal of Crisis Intervention

  • Help adults and children become "unstuck"
  • Provide support to get through, over, under, or around the crisis

City Wide Crisis Team

  • Consists of an organizational group
  • Additional members at discretion of Ass't Supt. of Pupil Services (Margie Daniels)
  • Citywide team for PTO is Margaret Hannah and Debby Belt. Margaret will coordinate and support the local school role after she has received information from Margie Daniels, who makes recommendations to local school crisis team and asks/assigns (for) help/support from PTOs.

School-Based Teams

  • Principal
  • Teachers
  • Mental Health Professionals
  • PTO

Role of PTO Member

  • Follow lead of Principal
  • Be Flexible
  • Provide support to community: This will be determined by principal and school-based crisis team but most often includes:
    • Food for meeting in school
    • Arranging for parent education of grief/loss (references are given by city-wide team)
    • Arranging for phone calls/e-mails to community using script formulated by school based crisis team
    • Identifying reliable family contact
    • Arranging for flowers, food etc to family home
  • Arrange for Basic Creature Comforts
  • Provide Consistency/Continuity of Care: (whatever you do for one crisis, must do something similar for all)
  • Be organized and have a list of available contacts to help with tasks on short notice
  • LEAVE EGO NEEDS BEHIND (many people will want to get involved, must be able to allow helpers in tactful and appropriate way)

Protocol for PTO role is:

  1. Margaret Hannah is informed of crisis from Margie Daniels or Carol Stapleton
  2. Margaret immediately calls local PTO rep, offers guidance and assistance recruiting more help from other PTO's if needed. Margaret also calls PTO Council Presidents to inform them of the crisis.
  3. Margaret/Debby keep in daily contact with local PTO as crisis unfolds and offers support and help along the way.

Other roles for Health/Safety job within PTO

  • Assign a parent volunteer to be responsible for food safety (this person must attend a food handler's course given by health dept)
  • Margaret Hannah arranges for course to be held 1x each school year
  • Coordinate with P.E. wellness teacher in school for parent involvement in health related initiatives in curriculum