Through this program Step #2 your PTA has two objectives:

1. Gather information from your community using the required community feedback questions. 
2. Complete the required Community Feedback Form by the Nov. 15 deadline. 

Gather Feedback

Through Step #1, your PTA should have developed a sense of how you can best reach your entire school community and learned more about the National Standards. Based on this, your PTA will gather community feedback by deploying a community feedback survey and/or hosting a listening session. To ensure the feedback you gather is action-oriented and aligned to the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships, National PTA provides, and requires your PTA to use, specific community feedback questions.  

Methods and Materials 

Essential viewing: Watch or listen to this Excellence Lesson discussing the available community feedback methods and materials that your PTA must use to complete Step #2. 

Host a listening sessions: Through this method your PTA will bring together parents, families and/or community members to discuss the provided, and required, community feedback discussion questions.

• Community Feedback Listening Session Guide (en español)

Listening sessions provide families and others the opportunity to express their opinions, share ideas, engage the community and will help your Excellence Team develop community-based ideas for addressing the areas.

Deploy a community feedback survey: For this method, National PTA provides a survey questions that align to each of the six National Standards and the goals outlined for each Standard. You may use paper and/or digital survey options, however, you are required to use the survey questions as provided by National PTA to ensure your feedback and efforts in the program align to the National Standards and best practices in family engagement.

To provide flexibility and customization options, however, there are (3) survey options available: 

1. Community Feedback Survey Goal 1 and Goal 2 Questions (52 Questions) (en español)
2. Community Feedback Survey Goal 1 Questions (26 Questions) (en español)
3. Community Feedback Survey Goal 2 Questions (26 Questions) (en español)

National PTA also provides template digital surveys in Google Forms that your PTA may copy and deploy to your community. Please follow this link to find directions for accessing and copying the survey options. It is highly important you create a copy of the survey to ensure your PTA maintains ownership of the survey and survey responses. 

Additional Questions

You may include additional questions or open-ended prompts to determine the greatest needs of your school community. This document outlines optional, additional questions for your PTA to consider, including:

• Questions to collect demographic information to help your PTA know what communities are represented in the conversation and which voices are missing.
• Open-ended prompts to gain additional information around community needs.
  
• Questions about the communication methods/platforms used by the PTA to get an idea of what is and is not working. 

Gather Feedback – Requirements

Survey and/or discussion questions

You will verify you deployed the required questions through the Community Feedback Form by sharing, for example, a link to or a download of your survey results, a photo of your tallied survey results or meeting minutes taken during a listening session. The results are collected to verify that your PTA used the required feedback questions in a valid way. We do not need all of the surveys you collected.

Number of people engaged 

Each school community is so different, so there is no minimum number of survey responses required by National PTA. However, we strongly encourage you to collect as many survey responses as possible to best inform your work throughout the school year.

Analyze Community Feedback

After your Excellence Team compiles feedback from your school community, the next step is to analyze what you have learned and explore ways that your Excellence Team can make school improvements and better engage families throughout the year.

Essential viewing: Excellence Lesson 2: Analyze your community feedback: Watch the video or review the slide deck to learn tips, tools and steps that will help you analyze your survey and/or listening session data.

As part of your Community Feedback Form, you will be required to share key takeaways from your results and analysis. Consider key themes that emerged from your survey results and/or listening sessions.

• What do respondents appreciate about family-school partnerships at your school? What would they like to change? 
• What surprises you about your results and why? 
• In what areas is your PTA already succeeding? How can you use that success to enhance other areas of opportunity?

Through these discussions, your Excellence Team will pick one focus area to help you dig deeply and intentionally in your school improvement: education; health, safety and well-being or diversity, equity and inclusion. Choose an area of focus that you believe best represents the needs of your unique school community generally and as evident through the community feedback your gathered.

Under your chosen Focus Area, you will also select a minimum of one goal, aligned to your chosen National Standard. Refer to page 4 of the Program Leader Guide (en español) to find a complete list of the Focus Areas, Standards, and Goals. 

Essential viewing: Excellence Lesson 3: Select your Focus Area and National Standard: Watch the video or review the slide deck to learn more about why you select a focus in the program and to explore recommendations and real-life examples from 2022-2024 Schools of Excellence.

We understand that your focus area may change after the Community Feedback Form deadline, and that is fine. You will have an opportunity to share your intended goals and action plans during Step #3.

Analyze Community Feedback – Complete the Community Feedback Form

By the deadline, your PTA will submit your Community Feedback Form in the program platform (Now closed). You can access your PTA's community feedback form here. The form has two main components:

• Your Survey Results: Share how many individuals you engaged, your method for engaging and your key takeaways. You will also verify you used the required community feedback questions in a valid manner.
• Your Initial Goals: Share your chosen Focus Area, Standard and Goal/s.

Reference this SAMPLE Community Feedback Form (en español) to prepare to complete the form by the deadline. Only PTAs that submit the required Community Feedback Form by the deadline are able to move forward in the and remain in consideration for the 2023-2025 School of Excellence designation.

Verify the status of your PTA's Community Feedback Form with this running list. Click the link and choose "Export to: Excel" to access an automatically updated report.  

Through program Step #3 your PTA has three objectives:

1. Develop and implement your School of Excellence Action Plan to increase and improve family engagement in your school community.
2. Complete the optional Share Your Plans Form to share with National PTA your progress through the program.
3. Check back with your community to understand the progress you have made (required) by redeploying the required survey questions. 

Essential viewing: Excellence Lesson #4: Overviewing Step #3: This Lesson aims to overview Step #3, including requirements, recommendations and tools for building an action plan and frequently asking questions. Watch the recording or review notes and the slide deck.

School of Excellence Action Plan

Upon completing your Community Feedback Form, your Excellence Team will use the feedback from your school community to develop your Excellence Action Plan to strengthen family-school partnerships. 

Each Excellence Action Plan will look different, as each school community is unique. However, all actions plans should align to your community feedback results and best practices in family engagement, specifically the National Standard and Goal you selected in Step #2. 

National PTA does not require your PTA use a specific format for your Excellence Action Plan, but this ready-to-customize template action plan is a good place to start! 

Essential viewing: Excellence Lesson 5: Deep Dive into Step #3 explores aligning your plan to the National Standards and the program Focus Areas and provides a walkthrough of the Roadmap to Excellence. Watch the video of Excellence Lesson 5 or review the slides and notes.

Take Your Action Plan to the Next Level

Use this SMARTIE Goals planning resource to explore how to craft effective and measurable goals that will advance your PTA's efforts. Or, for inspiration, check out these example Excellence Action Plans from past designees: 

• Aldrin PTA 2022-23 Action Plan
• Simpson Middle PTSA 2022-23 Action Plan
• Springbrook Jr. High PTSA 2022-23 Action Plan
• Twin Echo PTA 2022-23 Action Plan **Twin Echo earned the 2023 Phoebe Apperson Hearst Award 

Use the Roadmap to Excellence

The online Roadmap to Excellence is a resource guide that directly relates back to the community feedback questions, the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships and the provided Focus Areas.

As you develop your plan, make sure that your work is aligned with your community feedback results and the National Standards. Think about what work will have the greatest impact on increasing family engagement and will improve and/or maintain your results. You will later be asked to explain the measurable outcomes produced as a result of this work in the Community Impact Form (Step #4).

Share Your Action Plans with National PTA

To ensure you're progressing towards your goals, conduct a mid-year checkpoint with your Excellence Team and review how your efforts are going. We invite you to share your takeaways through the optional Share Your Plans Form. This is a great opportunity to document your progress, celebrate your accomplishments and ensure you are set up for success in completing the final program steps. Follow this link and use the directions to log in and access the form.

Essential viewing: Excellence Lesson 6: Action Plan Checkpoints shares how to conduct a mid-year checkpoint and utilize the results to engage your community. Watch the video or review the slide deck. 

• Reexamine which National Standard you are working towards to ensure it remains embedded in your work.
• Consider how your community feedback informed your action plan and seek new opportunities to support community needs.
• Explore your program Focus Area goals to further articulate measures of success and, as necessary, reprioritize your efforts.
• Outline your accomplishments so far, so you can report back and keep your community engaged in the process.

Check Back With Your Community

To assess the progress you have made since the fall, your Excellence Team will redeploy the same community feedback questions used in Step #2 towards the end of your school year. You can use whatever method (survey and/or listening session) that works best for your community and there is no minimum number of responses required by National PTA. However, we strongly encourage you to collect as many responses as possible to best highlight your progress in the program.

Improve Your Community Feedback Collection 

To prepare for gathering feedback from your community in Step #3, discuss with your Excellence Team your process and experience through collecting feedback in Step #2. Your answers to the following questions should help improve how you are gaining community feedback. :

• What ways did I communicate with my school community during Step #2?
• What methods were most successful and what methods were least successful in reaching and collecting feedback from our entire school community?
• What school communities did we miss and how can we improve our connection with these communities to collect their feedback this time around?

We highly recommend reminding your community about the School of Excellence program and outlining what you have accomplished so far. Download and customize this template School Community Letter (en español) with details about your action plan inform the feedback you collect. You can also use social media posts, newsletters or flyers to accompany the survey. Check out the flyer 2022-2024 School of Excellence designee, Haslet Elementary PTA created.

You are encouraged to include additional questions or open-ended prompts to gauge accomplishments and progress in the program. This document outlines optional, additional questions for your PTA to consider, including:

• Questions to collect demographic information to help your PTA know what communities are represented in the conversation and which voices are missing.
• Open-ended prompts to gain additional information around community needs.
• Questions about the communication methods/platforms used by the PTA to get an idea of what is and is not working. 
  

Methods and Materials 

You are required to use the provided methods and community feedback questions to once again gather community feedback. However, you can use any combination of the methods and include additional PTA-specific questions to customize your efforts for your community needs.

Host a listening sessions: Through this method your PTA will bring together parents, families and/or community members to discuss the provided, and required, community feedback discussion questions.

• Community Feedback Listening Session Guide (en español)

Listening sessions provide families and others the opportunity to express their opinions, share ideas, engage the community and will help your Excellence Team develop community-based ideas for addressing the areas.

Deploy a community feedback survey: For this method, National PTA provides survey questions that align to each of the six National Standards and the goals outlined for each Standard. You may use paper and/or digital survey options, however, you are required to use the same survey questions as provided by National PTA and used in the fall to ensure your feedback and progress in the program aligns to the National Standards and best practices in family engagement.

To provide flexibility and customization options, however, there are (3) survey options available: 

1. Community Feedback Survey Goal 1 and Goal 2 Questions (52 Questions) (en español)
2. Community Feedback Survey Goal 1 Questions (26 Questions) (en español)
3. Community Feedback Survey Goal 2 Questions (26 Questions) (en español)

National PTA also provides template digital surveys in Google Forms that your PTA may copy and deploy to your community. These templates have been updated for Step #3. Please follow this link to find directions for accessing and copying the survey options. It is highly important you follow the outlined directions and create a copy of the survey to ensure your PTA maintains ownership of the survey and survey responses. 

Through this program step your PTA has two objective:

1. Analyze the community feedback you received when you checked back in with your community (Step #3), as well as your progress through the program.
2. Complete the required Community Feedback Form by the June 15 deadline.

Reflect On and Summarize Your Progress 

Once your Excellence Team has implemented the bulk of your Excellence Action Plan, collected further feedback from your community, you and your Excellence Team will analyze your results and reflect on your progress through the program.

Begin with your initial community feedback and compare the results to the feedback gained in Step #3. Pay close attention the questions and areas aligned to the goal your set based on your initial community feedback. This will help you show specific growth and progress in the program as a result of your Excellence Action Plan. 

Consider the National Standard you selected as a focus for the program. Explore your community feedback related to this Standard to highlight progress and accomplishments. Discuss with your Excellence Team the best practices you utilized to outline exactly what your PTA did to improve your school community in this area.

Complete the Community Impact Form

In order to remain in consideration for the designation, you must submit your PTA’s Community Impact Form through the online program platform. The form will be available May 1 through June 15. Review the SAMPLE Community Impact Form (en español) to help prepare for this critical program step.

In order to remain in consideration for the designation, you must submit this form by the deadline. Through the Community Impact Form, your PTA will:

• verify your community feedback methods and results from the spring and share key results,
• overview your goals and efforts in the School of Excellence program and
• highlight your efforts to enhance at least one National Standard in your school community and
• explain a new family engagement goal for the following school year or explain how you will achieve further progress with your current goal.

Looking Ahead

Once National PTA has received your Community Impact Form by the required deadline, we will begin the review process. You will be designated as a School of Excellence if you successfully met program requirements and completed the first four of the five steps to the program and are considered in good standing by your state PTA.

Celebrate!

By mid-August, National PTA will announce the PTAs who are designated as 2023-2025 National PTA Schools of Excellence. Those who earn the designation will receive a banner and certificate in the mail as well as digital celebration tools and national recognition.

Designated Schools of Excellence will automatically qualify for consideration of the prestigious Phoebe Apperson Hearst Outstanding Family-School Partnership Award. The awards are presented to PTAs that have earned the National PTA School of Excellence designation and demonstrated outstanding success engaging families in student success and school improvements. The awards are the highest honor National PTA presents to effective family engagement!

While not required, many PTAs choose to reenroll in the School of Excellence program each year, regardless of their designation status, to continue their momentum gained in building family-school partnerships. We commend and celebrate this commitment to continuing the work! Enrollment for the program opens in the Spring at PTA.org/Excellence.