Showing Up for Arizona Students, Families and Teachers

National PTA’s mission is to make a difference for the education, health, safety and well-being of every child and make every child’s potential a reality. Earlier this year, after hearing heart-wrenching stories of the impact of COVID-19 on students, families and schools—and thanks to support from some of our sponsors—we established a COVID-19 relief funding program to award grants to local and district/council/region PTAs nationwide. Applicants were required to lay out a thoughtful action plan for utilizing the funding—$5,000 to local PTAs or $15,000 to district/council/region PTAs—in the areas of food security, mental health/social emotional support, distance learning, and internet and device access.

We received 880 applications nationwide for COVID-19 relief and were originally only able to fund 6% of the applicants. Though we have long partnered with NortonLifeLock to provide cyber safety education for kids and parents, we knew we needed to ask our partners to show up for us, and for children and families, in a different way this year.

I’m thrilled to share that NortonLifeLock pivoted existing funding and made an additional contribution to provide COVID-19 relief grants to all the eligible PTAs that applied in the state of Arizona.

With these funds, these PTAs will be able to make even more of a difference for their school communities during this challenging time.

In addition to addressing COVID-19 needs, we will continue to collaborate with NortonLifeLock through our PTA Connected initiative, which provides caregivers with digital wellness tools and resources. One of these tools, The Smart Talk, was developed by National PTA and NortonLifeLock to help families set tech ground rules together. As we have for several consecutive years, during the 2020-2021 school year, we will be awarding Smart Talk grants to local PTAs with the support of NortonLifeLock. (More on this in a future post!)

As students shift to spending even more time online this fall, discussing digital safety and device usage is more important than ever before. The Smart Talk uses guided questions pertaining to privacy, screen time, social media etiquette, app usage, and texting and calling to create a customized agreement that can be printed and signed.

We are grateful to NortonLifeLock and our other corporate sponsors that listened to us, understood our evolving needs, and stepped up in a way that will create an incredible impact for students, families and teachers this year.

Learn more about the PTA COVID Relief grants here.

About National PTA
National PTA® comprises millions of families, students, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of family engagement in schools. PTA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit association that prides itself on being a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who wants to be involved and make a difference for the education, health and welfare of children and youth. For more information, visit PTA.org.