The Pinellas County Council PTA wants families at the table before the next round of school closures, not after.

In a letter sent to all school board members the week of Oct. 19, the countywide PTA called on the Pinellas County Schools Board of Education to create an advisory committee that would give parents and community members input on closure and consolidation decisions, the Tampa Bay Times reported. The committee would have the ability to evaluate proposals and suggest alternatives.

The PTA modeled its idea on Miami-Dade County School District's Attendance Boundary Committee, which is written into district policy with clear guidelines and a structure for community involvement, according to the Times.

"Difficult decisions may be unavoidable, but the process through which those decisions are made can make a meaningful difference in maintaining public trust," the PTA wrote.

The push comes after the board approved closing six under-capacity campuses on Oct. 13, a vote that drew criticism from Tarpon Springs parents who said they were caught off guard and from St. Petersburg community members who argued the district applied different standards in different areas. The closures will remove close to 4,500 of nearly 45,000 unused student seats across the district, according to Times coverage of the Oct. 13 vote.

Board members themselves have signaled they want a different approach next time. In coverage published Oct. 22, board chairperson Caprice Edmond called for a long-range road map and urged Superintendent Kevin Hendrick to show all the options his team considered when making future proposals. She told Hendrick to share his recommendations along with the alternatives and the reasoning behind them.

Board member Katie Blaxberg said providing that kind of detail could answer criticisms leveled against the closure process. Board member Laura Hine cautioned that it must be clear such input would not amount to a parent vote, the Times reported.

Raegan Miller, a vice president of the countywide PTA, told the Times the district should have named specific schools or regions under consideration earlier so families could engage before decisions were made.

Hendrick acknowledged room for improvement. He told the board he would provide an update on the district's "Planning for Progress" efforts at a December workshop. That discussion is expected to include possible next steps for analyzing needs of several schools along the 16th Street N corridor in St. Petersburg, where the board took no action on Oct. 13.

No Palm Harbor or Dunedin schools were among the six approved for closure. But board members have cautioned that more closures are likely in future years. The district has 41 elementary schools with fewer than 300 students and 45 schools below 60% capacity.

A specific date for the December workshop has not been announced.