After years of supporting the Grant High School community, the Grant PTA has chosen to dissolve.

This decision was made after years of declining membership and income, as well as decreased participation in meetings and on its board. The PTA is currently implementing its plan to distribute its remaining assets throughout the Grant community.

The PTA is the only school-affiliated organization within the community whose central goal is to support Grant teachers. It accomplishes this mission primarily by assisting teachers with school-related expenses through grants and facilitating teacher appreciation events, which provide educators with meals at various times throughout the school year. “There are rules within the (Portland Public Schools) budget that don’t allow the administration of the school to use funds to purchase food for teachers, so the PTA has been filling that role,” says Sandy McDaniel, the former president of the organization.

McDaniel notes that the national PTA organization has a wider mission of fostering communication between parents and administrators, along with increasing family involvement. The Grant PTA mainly addressed community building by hosting in-person meetings every two months about a relevant topic. These meetings would often be attended by administrators, allowing parents to express their concerns and stay up to date on current events. Despite the support the PTA provides the community, its leaders had a difficult time sustaining it at Grant. According to McDaniel, the same group of people has been running the organization for years. “The same people just launder, rinse, repeat,” she says. “They just change your role, because our bylaws say you can’t be in a position for more than two years at a time.”

Going into the 2025-26 school year, the PTA was unable to elect a secretary and treasurer due to a lack of members volunteering to fill the roles. This puts it out of compliance with Oregon’s nonprofit regulations, which require organizations to have a president, secretary and treasurer.

“In May, when we usually elect officers, there were nominations, and one of the phrases used at that meeting
was, ‘The juice is not worth the squeeze anymore,’” says McDaniel.

Membership had been declining from 335 members in the 2021-22 school year to 126 last year. This factor, along with the PTA’s inability to elect a secretary and treasurer, led the organization to decide to dissolve. To fund its services, the PTA received money from a range of sources. Its most lucrative and dependable source of in-come was the Fred Meyer Rewards program, which donates a percentage of participants’ spending at Fred Meyer to the organization. The PTA was also funded through its annual $25 membership dues — $9.50 of which was sent to support the national and state PTA; the remaining $15.50 went toward the Grant PTA. The organization could also be donated to directly through SchoolPay. Traditionally, the PTA spent around $6,000 annually onteacher grants. Typically given in $500 increments, the grants supplemented teachers’ salaries with funds for various learning supplies. The PTA had $12,306 in its bank account in July 2025. After its decision to dissolve was finalized, the organization put together a plan to distribute its remaining assets to various programs across the Grant community, including GrantGives, the College and Career Center, the PTA Clothing Center and the 4 Star Hunger Project. Over half of the remaining budget was designated for staff appreciation and teacher grants.

As the PTA dissolves, there will be no source of funding for teachers’ extra expenses and appreciation events. “The teachers are kind of (out of luck) right now because we were the only little sliver in the community that helped teachers, and they’re very sad. I’m very sad for them,” says McDaniel. According to Maddie Cuda, a teacher in the Intensive Skills Classroom for students receiving special education, the hands-on materials the PTA sponsored are critical for their students to enhance their understanding of certain concepts.

“My classroom isn’t a classroom that you can just run out of a book,” they say. Without funding from the PTA, Cuda will have to rely on donations from the community. While they are thankful for the generosity, Cuda says that such gifts are not a stable source of funding in the way that grants from the PTA were. “Donations are at the will of the people who are happy to support us,” Cuda says. “And what happens if that changes?” Julia Kirkpatrick, an English 1-2 teacher at Grant, shares similar concerns regarding accessibility of funding for activities in the classroom. The PTA has sponsored multiple guest speakers for her classes, including local author Renée Watson and members of the Filipino
Bayanihan Center. According to Kirkpatrick, these guest speakers have given her students real-world applications of what they learn in class.

Cuda is concerned about their ability to plan for their students without the PTA’s sponsorship. “It’s one thing when we know a funding source is there and we can rely on it, because then we can plan,” Cuda says. “That makes it so we can deliver better education for our students, especially that hands-on material. If I can’t rely on it, I can’t plan for it.”

An anonymous Grant teacher and parent who has attended many PTA meetings says the PTA “would organize talks outside of the school day … when working families can actually come and go face-to-face with the administration about questions.” The dissolution of the organization worries her: “As a parent, there’s a lot of different ways you can get information at Grant,” she says. “But most parrents can’t come in during the school day and talk to administration about policies.”

McDaniel hopes that families will find an alternative way to get involved without the PTA. “If your kiddo’s into band, if
they’re into choir, if they’re into Constitution Team or mock trial, or they’re into robotics or they’re into athletics … There’s so many different channels to be in (the) community,” she says. McDaniel also hopes that parents will join or support GrantGives, which helps finance many of the school’s clubs and extracurriculars. Regardless of how parents choose to participate in the Grant community, McDaniel stresses the importance of maintaining engagement.

“Grant should be looking out for the whole community,” she says. “And that’s one of the premises of PTA, is we are trying to empower everybody to advocate for everybody.”