Our H&S has a whole committee called Home Room Mothers. People sign up to be a homeroom mother and then with the help of the teachers and our committee 4 are picked for each class. They coordinate classroom parties with the teacher and go an class trips as chaperones. Also the teacher may have some other things for the homeroom parents to do like light filing or special reader of the week. Our homeroom mothers generally can be counted on to help with fundraiser distribution and special events that our H&S holds during the year.
I hope this helps.
We also had a Room Parent Coordinator at my kids' elementary school. At "Meet the Teacher Night", the coordinator would have a sheet in each classroom for parents to sign up to be Room Parent, to send items to parties, to attend parties, etc. The coordinator collected these and called each person who signed up to be Room Parent, explained the duties, and sent them copies of the sign-up sheets. If no one signed up to be Room Parent, the teacher could usually give the coordinator a couple of ideas on who might be willing to do it, or sometimes, the teacher would ask a parent themselves and then give the name to the coordinator. The duties of our Room Parents primarily involved the 3 annual parties (planning the parties with the teacher and calling parents asking them to send items, attend parties or whatever they signed up to do). At our school, the practice was for the teachers to collect $1.00 from each student for each party and give it to the Room Parent to be used for party favors. The Room Parent could delegate the task of getting the favors or do it themselves. As someone else mentioned, there are usually some students who do not bring their dollar, so the Room Parent does sometimes spend some of his or her own money.
I hope this info is helpful.
Best of luck,
Linda
[This message has been edited by lindakm (edited 08-11-2001).]
We have a "Room Mom Coordinator" who organizes a little meeting before our first PTO meeting where she asks for volunteers to be "Room Mom" for their child's class. When they accept, she gives them the list of people who have completed the volunteer sheets for that particular class and the Room mom takes it from there. She only handles parties and she calls the volunteers to bring cookies, punch, games, favors, etc along with asking a couple to be chaperones.
most of ours help coordinate volunteers for the carnival and the booth that the classroom is assigned. Also, coordinate the parties for Dec. and February, as well as the Teachers Appreciation Day/Week.
Lots of phone calling and messages, and lots of out of pocket money when others don't send in what was planned etc.
At our school (K-8), we have a room parent in each classroom. They volunteer for this at the "meet the teacher" night held the second day of school. The duties vary slightly with each teacher but mainly they plan the parties, call for donations of food & drink,and collect money to buy the teacher's Christmas gift and Birthday gift. They DON'T plan field trips or get drivers. They usually don't help in the classrooms either.
