March 11, 2007	Sunday	Safar 21, 1428

LOS ANGELES: Even schoolyard bake sales have gone high-tech. In an increasingly wired world, parent-teacher associations (PTAs) -- the traditional purveyors of cookie and lemonade stands -- have morphed into sophisticated, technology-oriented organisations. They still sell baked goods, but do it far more efficiently by using online tools to coordinate and promote those and other efforts.

“Parents are absolutely more tech-savvy in everything, from making announcements to online fund-raising to connecting more with communities, school administrations, managing calendars and scheduling all kinds of events online,” said Jenni Gaster Sopko, a spokeswoman for the National PTA, which counts 26,000 chartered PTAs around the country among its members.

With PTAs and similar parent-teacher organisations (PTOs) finding more professionals and gadget-friendly parents among their ranks, they have evolved into lean, mean business machines. Their accomplishments include raising tens of thousands of dollars annually, lobbying Congress, championing changes like playground upgrades and new after-school programmes, and even taking on some budget-squeezed schools’ administrative functions.

And as this transformation has occurred, various web-oriented companies have stepped up to meet PTAs’ and other parent groups’ technological and organisational needs.

“What we’re finding is there’s usually one techie parent who assists with a website, but as soon as they move on, the PTA isn’t able to manage the site,” said Scott Garland, chief financial officer of Mediablend, which offers a product called GoWebBuilder for use by PTAs at www.connectingparents.us/.

“Our product lets people manage the site easily,” he said.

“Basically, you can purchase our product and it will run your PTA website forever through the changing of the guard for a $1,500 one-time fee,” he said.

Garland said the software saves parents valuable time by enabling them to reuse features like fund-raising sites that promote bake sales and such year after year.

As with all technological transitions, the corporatisation of PTAs faces some hurdles. For instance, some experts cite a growing gap between the PTAs of more affluent suburbs and those of lower-income areas, where parents’ may not have the same technological skills or access to computers.—Reuters