When I had kids in elem. school - the gen. meetings were held the last Thursday of every month at 7pm (but the board meetings were held the first Monday for the month at 6:30pm).
When I had kids in Middle School - the gen. meetings were held on a Tuesday (I think) around 6:30pm (but the board meetings were always held in the mornings - like around 9am).
Now that the kids are in High school (and college - YIKES) the PTSA has their meetings on a Monday at 6:30pm, but their board meetings are usually on another day at 8:30am.
OUR PTO MEETINGS ALTERNATE WE HAVE 9:30AM ONE MONTH THEN HAVE 7:30PM THE NEXT MONTH FOR STAY HOME MOMS AND WORKING PARENTS WE THINK ITS FAIR. WE TRIED THE AFTERNOON MEETINGA A FEW YEARS BACK BUT THEY WERE A MESS AND HAD SO FEW PEOPLE THE KIDS OUTNUMBERED US GREATLY AND EVEN WITH A BABYSITTER IT WAS TOUGH TO GET ANYTHING DONE. I AM MOVING UP TO A NEW (HIGHER GRADE LEVEL) SCHOOL THIS YEAR AND ALL THE MEETINGS ARE IN THE MORNINGS I THINK THATS UNFAIR TO WORKING PARENTS BUT THEY SAY THEY ARE TO BUSY ANYWAY WHAT DO YOU THINK?
We are planning on alternating our meetings to try and reach more parents. One month will be at 3:30, the next will be at 7:00. They will always be held on the second Wednesday of the month. We're hoping to get more involvement this way.
Our meetings are held the last Thursday of everymonth at 7pm. Each meeting is followed by a grade level preformance. We hold it right in the cafeteria where the preformance is. There are a few pluses to this first we have a large turn out of parents for to see there kids in a play presented by our music teacher, and with a little extra planning on our part we can plan to discuss issues that will affect the grade level that is preforming. 2nd we always have have the last minute joiners who just want to be heard that night and will pay their membership fees just to vote. Our votes are counted by holding up membership cards. The down side is to get parents of children not preforming to attend. We try to reward this by giving an ice-cream party to the class with the highest attendence (but not preforming) I use to think this was very silly until I attended the meeting accompanied by the science fair and found myself in a room with 4 parents. While the projects were being judged.
We meet anywhere from 5:30-6:30 this gives the parents time to get home from work around here. We have several working moms and we want every one to have the opportunity to attend, but ultimately it's mostly the stay at home mom's that attend. I hate for the teachers to have to stay that late. As a stay at home mom myself I when I was pres I tried to be as flexible as possible for teachers and parents. I set the meetings at 5:30 so the teachers wouldn't have to be at school so long. Most of our parents return from work between 4:00 and 5:00 because they have to go out of county to work.
