Whew, and I thought I was the only one!..I am an officer in our shcool's PTO and one of a few choice people that does anything at our school. Oh I hear day in and day out just how much people want to help but when it comes time to call them on it for some reason or another they are " busy". I put alot in to what I do at the school. I don't do it for me, I do it for not only my children but the other 280 kids in that school. I truly believe that if I stay involved at the school that it will show my sons that I take it seriously and that I think school is so important and hopefully they will take it more seriously because I am a presence in the school. Aslo I quite enjoy being know around school as "hey look it's hunter's mom". LOL. What I don't understand is how other parents don't feel the way I do. Please don't get me wrong I understand people work, and I know how fortunate I am that I don't have to, but one party?, one meeting?, one time helping with Market Day?...is that too much to ask someone to do for their children??? The few people in my group go above and beyond, and I have been threatened with divorce by my husband many times, LOL, but I keep going because I know I have to or else it won't get done.

We too had problems with meetings in the mornings so we switched to evenings cuz thats what people said they wanted and those people came to one meeting and we never saw or heard from them again. This year we have decided to alternate meetings, one month we will meet in the morning and the next month we will meet in the evening. I have truly learned the meaning of the phrase you can't please everyone! No matter what you do as an individual or a PTO someone, somewhere is not going to agree with you and you just gotta brush it off and go own. But let us remember majority rules and too sad if they weren't at the meeting to voice their opinion, RIGHT??

Wow, I've been holding that in I guess! Sorry to ramble. Good luck this year to all the stressed out moms and dads.

My story is somewhat the same as above (lovetosellslah)- because of my parents involvement in all of my school activities, I could not wait to get involved when my son got old enough to go to school. I tried to get acquainted with the PTO - they would schedule meetings, but never show up. When they finally had a meeting, they asked if I had any suggestions to get more parents to get involved. I told them to attend their scheduled meetings! That was last November, and things have not changed yet. I put all of my energy into my son's classroom.

[ 09-01-2004, 04:01 PM: Message edited by: lurking in texas ]

In the years I've been in our PTO if I had a dime everytime I heard someone's daily routine and how they have NO IDEA how I can find the time..blah blah blah...anyway, I could have personaly purchased the new playground for the new school! What stirred this up for me is at church we have a small "family life" group that puts together the Halloween parties etc for the families in our parish. One of the moms stopped coming because Sunday is the ONLY time they get to spend with Great-Grandma. She was asked to come to an hour long meeting. OKay, family is important- duh, family life group here,lol- but one hour. Another mom teases me, "don't you have like 10 kids or something?" you need to get home too??" "Yeah 5, but they also want to come to a Halloween party!"

A few years ago I was home for my 15 year class reunion. The moms that were always at school are the ones that had the coolest scrapbooks to share, stories written down and memories of our little class of 37 students. I decided right there, I want this for my kids. Oh you bet my sister kids me about being SO involved but wait till her little guy starts school...she'll get hooked.

Anyway, what I'm going to try this year is putting the PTO e-mail address out there. We need you and want to know how you can help us, let us know kinda info. Our middle and high school parents are the ones we miss (been there done that adittude OR grandparents that just want to be done).

sorry 'bout the rant but I do feel better! I just wish there was a magic answer.

[ 09-01-2004, 04:01 PM: Message edited by: mykidsmom ]

I agree with the last two posts. I am a pretty new parent at school (this is my second year) and am also a new PTO Board member--VP. The first complaints I heard was that only a few people did all the work. AND, that no one came to meetings. Well, let me say that no one came to meetings because they were held during the morning. They held meetings in the morning since that is when most, if not all, of the Board and Committee members wanted to have it. But that left the parents who work and still want to be involved out of the equation. Second, on a more personal note, I marked paper after paper during registration that I would be willing to help but only twice received a personal phone call specific to bringing a baked good. Now, I know that we are all busy--REALLY BUSY but if we plan on being on the Board, or head a committee, then we have to make sacrifices of our time--including evenings making phone calls. The main concern is communciation. I would see the school billboard with info on it, I would read the school newsletters but no one asked if I would be willing to help. I assumed (wrongly) that there was enough people to handle it. I spent my evening two nights ago stirring spaghetti sauce, doing laundry, etc. while on the phone talking to people about volunteering for Open House. All but one of the people that I talked to was extremely enthusiastic about helping. In fact, a number of then were new to the school and happy to get involved and that someone CALLED them. (Yeah! possibly new committee/board members for next year) I guess to sum it up:
COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION

My best friend is a shy and private person, I am quite the opposite. I understand that she doesn't want to be thrown into committees and fun days. She just doesn't like people looking at her. I wouldn't call her uninvolved though. She communicates with her children's teachers, buys endless supplies for the classroom, and stays on top of her children's homework. Involved parenting has different roles.

Aside from the Type A personalities (if I remember correctly), I found so many just wait to be asked, personally. When I was president I did my begging in newsletters, on the bulletin board, web page, PTO meetings, etc. I didn't understand why if so many of the people had marked "YES" on the I will volunteer part of our surveys and such I wasn't having people beat down my door. Not only do they want to be asked, they like specifics. It makes it a little harder to cooridinate things when you actually have to hunt down the people who said "yes" and then explain every little detail, but it's worth it in the long haul. Patience is a big deal in the PTO world. I was never a jump in and do it kind of person until the PTO bug bit me, sometimes I have a hard time remembering that other people are not as enthusiastic as me about things.

I agree with Daddio about talking to everyone. That is an easy one for me because I LOVE TO TALK. Also if when you get to know someone better it is easier to guilt them into working a booth at a carnival. Just kidding.

Last year was my first year as pres and I also wondered why no one wanted to be involved as well. The previous board advised us that they could never get anyone and they had to do it themselves (ALL the officers were new last year so we were starting from scratch as well so we did not know any better).

Last year my main goal was communication (our pricinple said this was a major issue so I thought I'd take that on). We focused on this with staff as well as parents making every attempt to be transparent about things and just talk to people. We now have a monthly newsletter, web site and are at most all functions in some way or another. e.g. my self and the vp were at the kindergarten orientation meeting and spoke for about 5 minutes on what the pto is, why volunteering is important, the importance of building the community spirit, etc and briefly touched on fundraising. Expressed that the fundraising is second to parent involvement in our school. It was well received and we did have some Q&A by parents.

This year our membership is already equal to last year (and we only had the drive at back to school day which is 2 hours). We had about 30 percent last year total. I am optimistic that we can reach 50 this year.

One thing we learned in talking to parents is that nearly all the people we talked to wanted to be involved - they just did not ask/say anything. Many were actually upset they were never asked in the past as they wanted to be more involved. The two main things I have heard the last year for not getting involved were:
- no one asked them to help
- they figured we did not need any help since we seemed to have it under control.

I spoke to a handful of people that did not feel that had time or did not want to help. Rarely did I come across this.

So, this year I have made each committee chair 3 people (much to my surprise I had more people interested than that). Last year we had 1 person for each committee chair and several were left unfilled. (our by laws did not state each chair is a person but entitled to one vote).

I am amazed how much just saying hi to people that I don't know and just walking around events talking has worked.

My advise: Don't just talk amongst your PTO group at functions - break up and roam. Ask people to help and if they don't want to do anything they'll tell you. But, more times than not people are willing and want to help out.