Former President Crystal Borror's speech to Hopewell Area School Board on August 26, 2025

Good evening. My name is Crystal Borror and I am from Hopewell Township. I am speaking this evening as Former President of the Margaret Ross Elementary PTA on behalf of the board and representing our members. I am here this evening to discuss the National PTA School of Excellence Award and its impact on our immediate community. 

On August 5th, the National PTA announced 330 schools in the United States that had earned the School of Excellence Award for the 2024-2026 designation period. Margaret Ross Elementary School was one of the 330 schools. In fact, Margaret Ross Elementary was the ONLY school in the state of Pennsylvania to earn this designation for this earning period. I am honored to have been trusted by our members to lead our school and organization down the path to earning this prestigious award from the National PTA.

The National PTA is the premier parent to school relationship group, working with individuals and organizations across the country to improve the lives of children everywhere through advocacy, collaboration, and engagement. The School of Excellence program works with PTA and School leaders to strengthen family-school partnerships, communicate effectively, and support student success. 

The MRE PTA Board choose to pursue the School of Excellence Award in May 2024 after it was clear the School Board would be choosing a future path that would not include the Margaret Ross Elementary as we knew it. We wanted to ensure we highlighted the excellent work that was already being done in our building by our teachers, our paras, our therapists, our counselors, and our support staff. What we didn’t know was this journey through the program would bring us to understand a greater need in the district for the same things our parents and stakeholders were looking for.

The initial part of the School of Excellence program is surveying our community, including parents and staff. The feedback was loud and consistent. Parents wanted clear communication channels from everyone. Parents wanted after school programing for their students. Parents wanted to understand the software Hopewell uses, including something as seemingly easy as how to access a students’ report card. 

In our committee discussions, it was important for us to wonder why? Why are these topics bubbling to the surface? What our committee ended up understanding is our school and PTA have too many communication channels. Students want access to art, music, and free after school activities because not every child enjoys sports. I will repeat that statement. NOT EVERY CHILD LIKES SPORTS. Not every family can afford or has the resources to engage in the sports lifestyle. When it comes to understanding our technology? It just grows so fast. Teachers are attending training on these technologies, but parents are left out and not familiar with the processes. We have low-income families trying to access our platforms who may not have ever used anything like CSIU before. We have grandparents doing their best to get their grandchildren through school and technology is just one more hurdle they have to jump through. We knew we as a group – a PTA board and a vice-principal of one, and two dedicated teachers, we couldn’t solve every problem. But we could try to solve these problems.

And so we began work. We followed the School of Excellence program and developed an action plan which we are now in the process of implementing. It is my honor and privilege to say Mrs. Steff has taken the lead of many of these items. As a leader of MRE, she is taking the time when she often has none to develop new communication strategies and to enhance or build training guides that parents can understand. Mrs. Steff is the crutch we are leaning on to implement change. 

Our work did not come without opposition. In working on developing clubs, chatter arose. Parents are tired and overcommitted. Teachers are overworked and unavailable or unwilling to give up time with their families. The solution? Compensate people for their valuable time! A staff member asked why the PTA should be the organization compensating staff for their work when the district has clubs established with pay scales at Jr. High and High School. So, we turned to Dr. Beltz with our request to formally establish clubs at the elementary level. However, after a long wait, the answer came back. No, it would not be equitable for all three elementary schools to establish clubs at the elementary levels. The decision left me shaking my head. Why? Because staff at Indy and Kane Road would not be willing to participate? Because Mrs. Kane didn’t want to deal with it? Because it was not in the budget? I put these questions before the School Board.

During the process of working toward the School of Excellence Award, I discovered another school in our district had earned the award previously. This news came as a shock as I had not heard of this award at all before we started pursuing it. However, Independence Elementary earned the School of Excellence Award for 2020-2022. And once again, in 2020-2022, Independence Elementary was the ONLY school in Pennsylvania who earned this coveted designation. Yet the general population doesn’t know. Maybe we blame COVID, that’s an easy out. Or is the true fault systemic lack of communication? Either way, I stand here today to publicly and loudly congratulate Mrs. Carla Buxton, former President of Independence Elementary PTA, Mrs. Brittany Enders, former Vice-President and Mrs. Courtenay Hall, former secretary for their incredible efforts of leadership and excellence and a job well done for earning the School of Excellence Award for Independence Elementary. I would also like to thank Dr. Kartychak who was Vice-Principal of Indy at the time of the Award. 

To once again highlight how monumental this Award is please know only seven unique schools in the state of Pennsylvania have earned this Award in the last 10 years. Our district has two of them. And in both cases, a Vice-Principal was the only administrator heavily involved on the award committee. 

As a PTA, we are fueled by volunteers. Our PTA Board are volunteers and we put in the hours. Every member who steps up and makes something happen in our organization is volunteering. Margaret Ross Elementary is extremely lucky to have staff and teachers – in fact, we have 100% of our assigned full-time staff as PTA members. These staff volunteer outside their working hours for our organization. I believe as a district, we do not do enough to highlight and appreciate the work our volunteers do for our school and our community. 

I stand here, publicly, to thank several key staff members who have made significate contributions to the MRE PTA during my tenure as President. Mrs. Doria, for the tireless work she does organizing and producing the MRE Talent Show. Ms. Beitler and Mrs. HK, for their work on various committees and projects throughout the last few years. Mrs. Cutone for her work in encouraging reading programs in our school. And last but certainly not least, Mrs. Bonnie for her never-ending smiles and being willing to make any event we dream up come true. I could stand here and list the PTA members who deserved to be recognized on this stage, but fortunately, the list is too long and I am sure this speech has already caused you to zone out. But please stay awake, our journey to excellence is not finished.

When we think of Excellence and we think of Volunteer Recognition as a district, we often overlook a key demographic of volunteers. Our Hopewell Area School District School Board. Our school board members are not paid. According to the PA State School Board Association, the average board member spends around 20 hours per month volunteering. Yes, they are elected to serve. But they serve as volunteers. On behalf of the Margaret Ross community, we thank you for your service. 

As the Margaret Ross Elementary community continues to grow in Excellence, we encourage the school board to do the same. We are asking the School Board for the following:

• Please reconsider clubs at the elementary school level. Students of all ages deserve to have access to learning opportunities that enrich their passions.

• Please communicate our “good news” with the community. A section at a school board meeting that doesn’t even make it into the minutes is not proper recognition for what our students, our staff, and our parent partner organizations are achieving. 

• Please work with administrators and parent partner organizations to outline the communication gaps from the administration and ways to fix them. It is unacceptable to vote on something as important as a district consolidation plan and then the public has no information for over nine months as to the status of project. 

• In the same vain, please work with administrators and parent partner organizations with parent focus groups to outline gaps in parent training with technology and what can be done to support our parents so they can support their children.

I greatly appreciate the school board for allowing me to speak tonight. The Margaret Ross community looks forward to celebrating our National PTA School of Excellence Award. And once again, we would like to thank the volunteers who spend time at Margaret Ross Elementary, the School Board for their service, the Indy group who also earned the School of Excellence Award and the rest of the volunteers making an impact across the district. Thank you.