Summer vacation is slowly coming to an end, and back-to-school season is already here.  You may be wondering what heading back to school and your HOA have in common, and it’s more than you would expect. Most parents in your community are probably always juggling school, work schedules, and the extracurricular activities that come with the kiddos.  Bring your community together by helping families tackle the school year with less stress and more help. After all, it takes a village, right?

Below are three ways your HOA can help your community come together and help each other:

  1. Survey parents and gauge their interest/need for carpools, bus stop monitoring, or a parent escort for those who walk to school. Chances are, most kids in your community attend the same school, so pulling parents together to take turns watching bus stops or carpooling for extracurricular activities is an excellent way to bring your community together.
  2. Create a community phone book. Having a list of parents, name and age of kid(s), and a phone number so parents can call neighbors in a pinch is a huge benefit, especially for parents juggling multiple kids, work schedules, and school schedules.
  3. Create a childcare co-op to help parents juggle after-school care. Instead of paying for the childcare, parents take turns helping each other. This keeps kids out of trouble during those dreaded after-school hours, and most importantly it give parents peace of mind.

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Though simple, these things can help your community come together for the benefit of kids and the sanity of parents. It’s one of the best ways to build a sense of community. At the end of the day, a community that prioritizes their kids is a community that people will want to live in. Everyone needs help from time to time; make it easy for parents in your community to find it!