VIS PTA Representative Job Description
What is a VIS PTA Rep?
- Someone who agrees to be the contact and point person for their PTA in regards to helping the Volunteers for Issaquah Schools (VIS) campaign, which may be for a school bond, school levy or both. Ideally, this position would be filled every year to keep the presence of VIS active in the PTA and not only during campaign years.
- Clearly, during off years, a VIS Rep could simply remind their community about the progress of bonds & levies that voters passed, and how it relates to their school community.
- During election years, there would be specific campaign activity and action items given to the VIS PTA Rep
Who Makes A Good VIS PTA Rep?
- Someone with good communication skills
- Someone who knows how to push information out to the people in the school community
- This is a great role for someone who knows lots of people, is involved in various organizations, or has a strong social presence
- People who have been a past or current legislation chair, a past PTA president, or past fundraising chair make excellent VIS Reps
- Anyone that is passionate about advocating for the betterment of our schools
There are three parts to the job:
- Communicate the benefits of the bond or levy package to your community
- Recruit volunteers to help with the campaign within your community
- Actively lead the campaign direction within the school community
What we ask of VIS Reps:
- Attend the Campaign kickoff
- Present information for 2-5 minutes at every PTA meeting
- Facilitate getting an endorsement from the PTA membership
- Forward email news to the PTA
- Submit already prepared newsletter articles to your communication channels
- Make a list of people we can send a fundraising letter to early in the campaign
- Recruit people for Literature drops within 14-21 days of election (see below)
- Recruit people for honk & wave events (see below)
- Assist with localized postcard mailing during month of election (VIS makes this very easy for each PTA to do)
- Distribute yard signs, magnets, window clings, pens, etc. to PTA and school community
Communicate the benefits of the bond package to your community
We will give you all of the materials you will need to effectively communicate the bond package. We will provide emails you can send, brochures you can hand out, and info for social media posts and website content.
Recruit volunteers to help with the campaign
This is crucial. It is illegal for the school district to use school resources or actively campaign for a bond or levy while on the school clock. The school district can give factual presentations and answer questions only regarding a bond/levy package. Also, the school district can produce only ONE piece of factual literature and mail it out. That is it. That means all active campaigning, asking for “YES” votes, etc., of the campaign is done by volunteers, by us, by the VIS team, the PTA reps, and community volunteers.
So we need your help to recruit volunteers for:
Literature Drops – Every school will have parents and teachers meet at a designated location to walk neighborhoods and drop off literature on doorsteps.
Fundraising – We’ll ask you for a list of 10 people (even better if you can give us more) from your school that you think might donate money. You will provide their name, phone and address, we’ll do the rest.
Yard Signs – We will create the signs and give them to you, but we need volunteers to help put them up across the entire school district. This is an easy “do at a time that works for you” job. You will find there are people who are interested in putting up yard signs for us and may have great location ideas.
Honk & Wave – These are generally the day the absentee ballots go out, the day the ballots drop in the mail, and the day of the elections. Volunteer groups will stand at selected intersections all across the district waving signs. We have a list of highly visible locations or you can suggest an alternate location.
You might be feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point. Please don’t be, put as much or as little time into this as you can afford. Every bit that you contribute helps this campaign. Your role is significant because you build the grassroots organization. You DO NOT have to personally do everything that is listed, just help us where you can as well as find people who are willing to give some time to the campaign.