I'd like to see some teachers at ours just for some feedback with the parents. We haven't had a teacher come in over a year. Our principal wasn't into that. The teacher with a child in attendance doesn't come either. I miss the good OLLLLD days when they use to. Some 20 years ago.
We don't keep track of teacher involvement and we don't tie our disbursements to teacher participation. I really wish our group was a "Parents' Organization", without the "T" because that's how we operate and that's fine with us. If we help the teachers, great. If they particpate, even better. Many of our teachers are also parents and that's when we like to see active participation. Our principal also encourages all the teachers take an active role (ex: work at an event), but we don't measure it.
OK I'm starting to sound like a parrot but Phil is right on this one- at least in my opinion.LOL All staff, faculty and parents are members- they do need to pay their dues however to vote on items. We usually get a few teachers to pay dues. Each of our teachers receive an allocation for class supplies regardless of whether they attend meetings or pay dues. Actually our principal does not even encourage them to attend! At first I was upset about this but then I realized all the time they spend at school and they do help out when we have fundraisers going on, etc. so in the end it evens out. We are a PTO so our "job" is to help the teachers as well as the students/parents.
We have 2 volunteer Teacher Reps (one K-2 and the other 3-5) and they come to our general meetings - there is an agenda item for the Teacher Reps to give a report (mostly, just tell us things they want to know or request). Rarely does another teacher attend.
Teachers (Admin and Parents too) are members just by virture of attending the school - dues are voluntary. We ususally get a small handful of teachers to pay dues - I hope we can get better participation next year.
Each primary teacher and one of each specialist receives an allocation for classroom supplies. The receive it regardless of whether they attend meetings or pay dues. About a quarter of them send thank you notes to the PTO (which we really appreciate).
We also subsidize field trips and do other things, but there are no strings attached.
Our view is that the teachers are in the building teaching our kids for a full day and they have their own lives to lead outside school. The Teacher Reps keep in touch with their peers and bring issues to our attention - that works for us.
BTW: for a PTO that has about 250 families in the school, we usually get about 2 dozen parents attending the meetings. So only 2 teachers is not out of line.
The only thing we require from our teachers is paying the 5.00 due. We give them each 250.00 and then throughout the school year they have an opportunity to earn more money (volunteering for specific events) We have 2 teacher reps and that is all we expect to attend meetings. If a teacher has a 'big ticket' request they will attend the meeting. Outside of that we have no expectation for them to be there, otherwise they would be there all day long which isn't very fair to expect.
I ran into this a while back. I received a grant and alloted so much per teacher. Some of my biggest "spenders" were those who did not join, did not promote in the classroom, did not attend meetings, and could care less about the organization. So, before they received an "order form" for school supplies, I stapled the largest index card I could find with black permanent marker, "Won't you become a member today?" There was about seven of them. One did become a member, one tore the index card off and turned in the order anyway (her order is on hold), and the others did not turn in an order form. It's tough but if you're not going to support me or this organization, I'm not going to support you. I have to put it nicely, of course.
