jjohnson, Dr. Phil Macgraw and his son Jay has challenged every school in the nation to do their part in addressing bullies. Jay has wrote a book on this and does guest speaking. (I'm sure that is not cheap.) They have a contract for parents, teachers, and students to sign. You can find this info on www.drphil.com.
I printed those out. They are very simple and to the point. I asked our guidance counselor to share this with other schools in the district, but I think that is as far as it went.
I don't think that bullying is took serious enough in our schools. It really effects our kids, whether they are the bully, the victim, or a witness to it.
Another issue you could address is divorced families. We have an outside counseling orgination that comes to our school and has a group activity for kids from divorced parents.
I'm facing a similar issue. Our school has asked the PTO to assume responsibility for providing speakers for four "parent forums" throughout the year. One forum will be led by a counselor from the excellent drug education program used by the school. For another forum, I hope to schedule a volunteer from the local Rape Crisis Center, who spoke to middle school parents (we are a K-12 school) last year about bullying. I don't know where the speakers for the other two forums are going to come from yet. I'm thinking of speaking to the school counselor about issues that she deals with on a regular basis, and perhaps contacting local agencies who may be able to provide speakers on those subjects. My biggest concern with these "volunteer" speakers is the quality of their presentations - as is probably the norm, we have little/no money to contract professional speakers, but our parents will have little tolerance for a less-than-polished presentation!
A car seat check, interesting parents with businesses or intresting jobs, organizations in your area that are looking for donations (I heard a talk about an org. that was taking donations for medical supplies to send overseas, never knew about it) local VFW etc to come and talk about the proper way to care for your flag or maybe the history......
Forgot to mention... we already did a college funding night. About a half a dozen people showed up for that one. I'm looking for more things that deal with the here-and-now and not so much the future at this point.
I sent out a PTO poll this year, and I got a lot of requests for more family-centered meetings or guest speakers to touch on issues facing children and parents today. I agree with them, but now what do I do and where do I turn???
Meetings in the past have pretty much been strictly business, thanks for coming, good-bye. Know what I mean? How can we blame parents for not wanting to come to meetings like that? How boring!
I want our meetings to bring a sense of community and not be all business this year! I appreciate all your input.
