Our charter school is in the same academic boat. Since the school moved to the new location, our test scores are down and parent involvement is....lets just say I can relate. Oh, I have been asked about being paid before too and they were serious! Now we are able to get help from our high school students but that's because they need the community service credit!

I have been on the board for five years and wonder how long can I go on considering my youngest is only 20 months old!

If you really think about it though there are volunteers that get paid, it's also known as embessment but HEY they got paid! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Hi Julier, Thanks for your response. Our school is a smaller public school. We have 15 classrooms grades K-5. Roughly 380 students. Four years ago they opened our district up to "school of choice" and that is when things began to downslide. We still had a strong parent base at that point, but as those parents moved to the middle school, we could never seem to get parents to take their place. We have kids coming in from inter-city Detroit and rough out lying areas. We went from from having only 10% receiving free lunches to 45% in less than three years. We went from receiving Michigan's Golden Apple Award two years in a row for our Meap scores (we recived a total of $100,000 for our school alone) to barely making the grade. There are so many issues in this district now regarding the caliber of kids that are coming now, and that is the main reason we are moving. But I digress, I just don't want to leave this PTO on such shaky ground. We stand to lose much more that just the PTO activities if this PTO fails we will also lose our state accredidation, which means we will lose money.

Our PTO does not handle classrom volunteers either, the teachers are at a loss as well...but I will do my best to recruit, as always!!

Wow, I guess you are in a tough situation. I assumed everyone knew that volunteering was unpaid.

I think your school needs to work on getting more volunteers in the clasrooms before you can expect more meeting attendance. In my experience, parents are more willing to directly help their child's classroom, get face time with the teacher, than to help the parent organization. PTO participation comes next, after they're comfortable and involved.Nearly all of our regular, very active PTO members are also very involved in the classrooms (our group has no control over room parents or classroom volunteers- those are run by the school).

Your teachers and principal should keep encouraging parents to get involved. Include data on how their child's education will improve if they are more active. It might have more weight if the request comes from the principal or teacher than if it comes from you.

Out of curiosity, what type of school system are you in? Private, public, size of school, typical income level, etc? I'm just wondering because we seem to have very strong involvement at our school. We are a large public school system (1100+ kids in a K-2, 1100+ in a 3-5) in a mid- sized, middle class town in Massachusetts. We only have something like 3% free or reduced lunch.
While our meetings are not very well attended (between 15-25 parents at a meeting) we have a lot of classroom and PTO volunteers.

Thanks for the support. I had to share this with you guys.... One of the mom's came to me today and said, she would love to help. Of course I get excited and tell her some of the things we need help with. She then asks how much will she be getting PAID to VOLUNTEER!! I thought she was kidding, so I said well you know they only pay me the big bucks and she said "Really, then maybe I will run for President next year." When I explained that I nor any other board member gets paid, she said, "Well why do you do it...I wouldn't volunteer for free" This is truly the mentally of this new group of parents that we have here... Thought you guys might get a chuckle out of that story.

Any hoot, our wonderful Principal is mailing home letters from himself encouraging people to come...maybe that will help.

You can move small mountains, you are faster than a speeding bullet, you can stop a train with one finger....and now YOU are the reason why no one volunteers??? You cannot possibly blame yourself for the selfishness or laziness of others! I have to admit that I (as well as the other previous posters) could be added to the control freak role call, but I still have volunteers for events. What's my secret? Competition! Pure, unadulterated competition! For instance, we have quarterly staff appreciation lunches and they used to be done by the same group every time...the ones who always are willing to do whatever you need. Now, a group of classes hosts each one. PreK-2nd, 3rd-5th, Middle School and High School. Now those moms are trying to outdo each other and each lunch has been more spectacular than the last. It's great. Granted, I have a child in three of those groups and volunteer for all of them, we're seeing a lot of new faces show up. With the holiday parties each class has a roomparent with a strict rule of "spread the wealth". With 5 parties throughout the year, the parents choose at least one to help with. This has been good for both the room parent (too many in the past did it all without asking for help) and for the parents (who needed an extra shove at times to participate. If these tricks don't work, cancel events. Why should you be the only one who cares about doing fun things with the kids!

You have done a wonderful job in the past getting your group together, but you should not shoulder the blame for lack of dedication by others. Pat yourself on the back, relax and prop up your feet, and know you have done your job well! :cool:

I wish I had some advice to give. I think your letter was a great way of letting people know the situation. Too often everyone assumes that there are enough volunteers and they aren't needed. My only suggestion would be that you put down something like "if you can't make our meeting, please call so and so if you would like to help." This gives people who have a legitimate excuse not to make the meeting but still want to help an option.

I have had luck with threatening to cancel events if no one steps forward. Last year we had no one to chair our Winter Carnival. I sent home a notice that it would be cancelled if I hadn't got a volunteer by Friday. Three people called, I got them in touch with each other, and they did a fabulous job. These three had never been to a PTO meeting before, in fact, one still hasn't been. But one of the three joined the board this year, and all three are running the carnival again.

These three also did a great job of getting volunteers for this event. We always had trouble getting enough help because it's an event you attend with your child. We also had to limit the number of people who could attend due to fire codes. They decided to let volunteers and their families get first crack at signing up to attend; those who weren't volunteering were put in a lottery for the remaining spaces. We got over 200 parents to volunteer this way.

Just keep trying- keep reminding parents how much they are needed, and hopefully you'll get a few more people. Good luck.