The Niskayuna Parent Teacher Organization’s website has gone green for the month of October.
Niskypto.org hopes to streamline the movement of documents such as school menus and school phone directories by using the web and creating email and PDF’s instead of hard copies of the same items . The goal of the project is to help the community to use fewer waste products in producing updates and school documents and save paper that the district uses on contact information and updates sent home to students while helping to increase communication between the PTO and the parents of the community.
The website includes a copy of the district calendar, council documents, membership information, volunteer opportunities, meeting reminders, district links and information from each of the schools in the Niskayuna School District. Throughout the month of October, the Niskayuna PTO is working to promote the use of the website and green living by looking for ideas on how to make the schools in the district more carbon friendly and build upon the work already done by the PTO. Comments are updated daily and can be submitted electronically on their website’s eForm. Comments have included opting that the school menu not be sent to the home, but access online, to cut back on wasting paper and the addition of recycling bins in the school.
`One of our main issues of the year is increasing the use of NiskyPTO.org to increase our communication between the PTO and the family body, `said Co-President of the Niskayuna High School PTO Connie Trigger. `We are encouraging people to subscribe to the website at our meetings, in the newsletter and at PTO functions. The more people that we get to sign up, the greener we can be.`
The Niskayuna PTO website is updated on a weekly basis every Sunday with updates from the PTO to provide communication between both the school and parents in the community.
`Our main goal is to increase communication between the PTO and the parents,` said Trigger, `at the high school we have been trying to use electronic to communicate with parents for the past three years. First we started using grade-level email lists and then we transitioned to asking people to subscribe to the website. Email is what people use today, and you can contact them at any time day or night.`
The newsletter will be posted on the website but will also go out in hard copy. The Niskayuna PTO is not in a situation yet to make it only available online but is pushing for parents to subscribe to the online updates to cut down on paper waste by printing the newsletter out during the year.
For more information on how to go `green` for Niskayuna schools, go to www.niskypto.org for more information.
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