Thanks guys. We all will try to hang in there and maybe, we will get a little more invovement from the teachers. We do have some great ideas, and hope that maybe we can work out a schedule. The funny thing is that most of the PTO board members are currently working in the school. We want to work with the teachers to get some needed things, and maybe some not so needed things, for the kids. Our school has had a dramatic turn around as far as the MEAP & IOWA test scores. We used to be at the bottom of the school district, just a few years ago. We have had a new principle in here now for 2 years, and I think the appearance and moral has went up dramatically. Some people think some of the things we are trying to get for the school are materialistic, but we have wonderful comments from parents, students, and everyone. I do think if our school looks good, the kids feel better about going here. Our next goal is to do major paving of some horrible muddy areas, and we would like to purchase new playground equipment. We are very proud of the fact that our test scores were some of the best in region, and would like to reward the school & kids by funding different activities.

We felt this year we were going to have a high number of teacher participation because our President and Secretray are teachers. They were even able to get more teachers to join PTA this year. We always have a couple of teachers at every meeting and I thought this was great. I just learned (I am new to the club and new treasurer) that the Primary School Principal requires 2 teachers at every meeting so they can report at their staff meeting the next day what went on. I sort of felt betrayed, I have also gotten the feeling that there is not a lot of trust between school staff and the PTC.

We have even had to beg for the teachers to ask us what they need but everything has to go through the Principal's and apparently their requests do not get heard.

Our biggest problem is parent participation. We had 101 members this year and it seems the same 10 to 15 people get asked to do everything. This time of year, you can start seeing a lot of burned out parents. I have suggested that next school term, say we take our member list and start rotating it, get phone numbers and email addresses. Most parents don't come to the meetings because of so many other events going on and I have been told that the time of it and it always runs close to 2 hours is too late for them, it is too late for me sometimes. So they are not there at the meetings to sign up for anything.

We feel however, that we have had a good school term as far as the club goes. In past, it seemed so many fundraiser's were done with no goal in mind and parents were getting tired of this. This year, we have stated what they were for, such as, our recent Carnival was to raise money to buy AR Books and tests for the Library and we had a much better turn out.

Hopefully, we will have even a better year this coming school term, especially since we will have a brand new K-5 school the following year and all the principals are going to want us to raise money for items for the new school.

I go back and forth on the lack of teacher participation at our meetings. On the one hand, we all know what the 'T' stands for, but on the other hand, the teachers are the ones who make sure the students get all the information for our events, collect money or tickets for the events, etc. Oh yeah, and they're teaching our children! So I try not to get too discouraged by the fact they're not there.

Our principal is at nearly every meeting and he acts as a liaison. He has a monthly meeting with one teacher from each grade so if there's something we need, or they need from the PTO, it's usually discussed there and he brings it to the PTO meetings.

We have monthly meetings that alternate 1:30pm or 6:30pm start times. Obviously teachers can't make the 1:30 meetings since they're in class, and many don't want to have to come back to the school at 6:30. So we've thought about adding a 3:00pm start time every now and then to see if that would increase participation. We'll see how it goes.

Hang in there!
Tracy

I have been very disappointed in the lack of teacher participation at our school PTO meetings. We do have a good teacher appreciation banquet planned, and fund various functions for the teachers and their classrooms. I do believe only one time this year, a teacher has been at our PTO meetings. They have no problem asking for money, though. We did recently change our bylaws to state that any special funding by teachers, must be submitted at the next PTO meeting. At the first staff meeting of the year, they are to sign up to have a teacher representative at all meetings. We would like a copy of that list, so we can send a friendly reminder to the teacher. I also feel that if the teacher cannot make it that night for some reason, they should take it upon themselves to find another teacher to replace them. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but we do love our teachers, and just want their input at the meetings. Any suggestions????