I am a co-chair of the PTO in Brookline, NH. In my "other life" I am a website developer. I developed a database driven website for the Brookline PTO. Our website is in reality an Administrative Tool.

Volunteers: Parents can sign up on-line to volunteer. Naturally we still send out the sign up in backpack mail for those who prefer to sign up that way and the volunteer coordinator keys them in on-line. Anyone with the password (we have about 8 people with administrative access) can then view and print the volunteer reports, they can be filtered by event. You can play with a demo of this at: www.secure-software.com/School_Demo/default.htm

Many pages on the website can be updated via the same administrative access - you fill in a form (much like this message form) and click Add, Change or Remove. The following pages on our website are updated this way:
Home Page Banner (for school closings, etc)
Calendar
Committee Updates
Board Positions
Meeting Minutes (we add the school board minutes as well as the PTO minutes)
PTO Newsletter
PTO Programming
Staff Wish List
Teaching Art from Art
Bus Routes
Lunch Menu
Teachers/Staff Members
School Board Members
Roller Skating Registrations
We can also view many other reports online, such as our Guestbook, Volunteer Nominations, Roller Skating Registrations (along with total people and total dollars), Committee Manuals and Committee Documents.
Since we like to keep so much information on our website, it was important to build a website that could be maintained by many people. The only requirement they have is a computer with internet access and a browser. With Roller Skating we even added a search function so families could confirm that their registration had been received since backpack mail isn't always 100% reliable.

This has proven to be most helpful to us since many of us are so busy, we all have the same information available at our fingertips whenever we need it. You can view our website at: www.BrooklinePTO.org. Obviously, I can't give you our password to view our reports, but you can see some of the same reports on the demo site listed above.

The cost of a program like this is pretty reasonable and every website is developed specifically for your organization. I would be glad to speak with anyone personally if they would like more information, just send me an email at
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[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: jf ]</p>

fade - I couldn't find your database, but am really interested in it. Is it on your website yet? Thanks

Please go to: www.wkmcnews.org/critter the form is posted along with other forms that are requested most often. Please tweak them to style to benefit the needs at your school.

Helpfulhintsmom-
I would love to have a copy of the volunteer page.
DarleneBrooks

Our school (a Montessori school) uses an online program called PTIX - Parent Teacher Information Exchange. All of our families are registered in the system and if they have internet access/e-mail, they are able to communicate with their childs teachers via the internet.

Regardless of that, our PPA is able to use the program to track each families volunteer time (all our families commit to 10 hours per year). Parents can use the online school calendar to sign up for online events, and their volunteer time is tracked automatically. Or, we can also manually enter the time off of sign-up sheets. It also gives you a section for recording parents' different talents, so if you are looking for someone to give a Cooking lesson to a class, you can search for parents who have listed that as one of their talents.

We are very happy with this program. I think it could work for schools that are not Montessori, as well.

The web-site for more info is www.ptix-online.com.

I, too, would love a copy of your spreadsheet. Thanks!

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