Wow. Well we have one of those mailrooms that you can access from the office and from the snack machine room. The boxes seperate the rooms. The office closes at 4 or 4:30 depending on how late the office staff stays, but the other opening is open all the time as far as I can tell. I guess there could be some parents picking up kids from the afterschool program at 6 but I believe they lock up the school after that. We arent' in the best neighborhood and I can't see letting people come and go. Maybe you could come up with a time limit, like someone should be responsible for approving your correspondence in 24-48 hours or you can assume it is ok. We are supposed to send things home in Spanish as well but can't always get the translators to do their part and so stuff gets sent home at the last minute in English and I've gotten to the point where I keep track of when it was submitted for translation and when I finally sent it out so that I am not held responsible for it. Good luck.

Hi Kmamom!

Our mailboxes are in the main office and we have access to them from the time school opens until around 4:30 when the office closes at which point it becomes locked. I am sure if I showed up after 4:30 and asked for a janitor to open the office for me he would, but honestly I would not want to do that.

Another "issue" we're dealing with.

How do you all deal with handing out fliers and picking up your mail?

When my group first started, I was really wigged out about having access to the mailboxes (my group and our PTA have one as well). Lest anything go missing etctera, I didn't want to be the last one having been there. However in the spirit of assisting our office staff (who would have refused to hand our stuff out any way ) myself and the Vice Pres would distribute our literature, occasionally getting help from other board members. If it was after school hours (i.e. 8:00 pm), I always made sure a custodian was there to keep an eye on us.

Long story short, we've been informed that we (and supposedly the other groups) can only hand out things between 8:30 am- 5:00pm. Normally it's not a problem, but with all our kids activities, some people working full time etcetera, it's not always convenient, and for YEARS prior to my group when we came to the office was NEVER a problem. I definitely understand you don't want all sorts of people going in and out of there, but if you know who was/is there, should it really matter what time? I have no problem with a sign in sheet or time clock even to check in and say I was there if it'll make handing out stuff and collecting my mail easier.

The time thing isn't the BIG issue for me, but rather that I feel as though this is telling me I'm (and other parent volunteers we're) not trustworthy. Especially since substitutes and aides don't need to "check in " and are allowed in there at any time.

It's getting to the point where my VP went to hand out fliers at 4:50 on Friday (which the principal received on Wednesday a.m. to OK, AGAIN--remember we have to remind her via email that we're handing things out and can't until we get her response, but she didn't get back to me until noon on Friday. This left me that day very little time to get to Staples to copy) but the Principal and Vice Principal had already left for the weekend. Though the office wasn't locked yet (the custodians were in there and there were kids making phone calls), we're paranoid about a fight tomorrow because of the whole time issue.

It's things like this that make me nuts. That and hearing that she's told parents with VAILD concerns (whom I know to be very pleasant and nice people who would NEVER treat her with disrespect)--"I don't like your attitude." Excuse me? I guess you're going to like it a whole lot less in about 3 seconds, HONEY.

[ 12-12-2004, 07:59 PM: Message edited by: kmamom ]