June 30, 2007

The ultimate PTA mom
Anaheim's Jan Harp Domene, is set to serve as national president of Parent Teacher Association.
By ERIC CARPENTER
The Orange County Register

Jan Harp Domene, an Anaheim mother of three, will take the oath of office this weekend as the highest ranking volunteer in the Parent Teacher Association.

Domene will serve a two-year term as national president, officially beginning Sunday, when she is sworn in during the PTA's 111 {+t}{+h}national convention in St. Louis. She'll be the 50 {+t}{+h}president in PTA history and the first from California since 1957.

During her presidential term, she will guide PTA policy, working with staff members in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and oversee a membership of more than 5 million parents and teachers, including 155,000 from Orange County.

Domene's rise to national PTA prominence began with a more humble volunteer job: hamburger chairman. That was back in 1975, when her first child began attending Thomas Edison Elementary School in Anaheim and Domene wanted to know more about what was going on in her daughter's classroom. So she volunteered to help and was promptly appointed to pick up and distribute burgers to the lunchtime masses.

It led her to join the school's PTA – what turned out to be a life-changing event.

Q:What led to your rise to national PTA president?

A: It started with me caring about who was teaching my kids and deciding to get involved. I served on the PTA at Edison Elementary, Sycamore Junior High and then my alma mater, Anaheim High School.

After my children grew up, I realized I could still contribute by representing and advocating for parents and teachers on a larger scale, working on policy decisions.

I served at the county level, then the state, and it led to this.

Q:What will your job as president entail?

A:I'll work out of my home office in Anaheim about half the time, e-mailing and teleconferencing. The rest of the time, I will be traveling, doing training, speaking in front of Congress and Sacramento. But I'll also be visiting school sites, meeting with individual PTAs. To succeed at this level, you have to stay in touch with the grass-roots of the organization.

Q:What will be your primary focus in your two-year term?

A:I want to better connect our membership. With more than 5 million members all over the country, we need to improve our Web site, add resources and help our members network better.

And I want to increase that membership. So we will focus on tapping fathers.

We want them to get involved in every aspect of their child's education. This is a multimillion dollar organization dealing with decisions that directly affect their children. Why would they not want to be involved with that?

Q:Has the focus of PTA shifted much in the 32 years you've been involved?

A:We are dealing with new issues all the time, such as the No Child Left Behind Act and ensuring the voice of parents and teachers is heard in its reauthorization. Still, the same issues the PTA was founded on more than a century ago are the foundation – child education, safety, nutrition, and equity in school funding. Those issues will always be there, so I keep plugging away trying to do my part.

Jan Harp Domene

Resides: Anaheim

Age: 56

Education: Graduated Anaheim High School. Studied journalism at Cal State Fullerton, left school before earning degree.

Profession: Owns an event planning company.

Family: Husband, Greg. Three adult children: Chris, Kevin and Kyle.

Words she lives by: "Never let a stranger educate your kids; get to know your children's teachers."