We definately use the come to a fun night and maybe you'll slowly get involved. Trust Tim's advice on moving people up the ladder of involvment. We also donate a book to the library with a name plate for every committee chair and host a volunteer tea with the school. We do a volunteer sign up form booklet. We have 200 people easily attend fun events, 25-30 at our meetings (no ploy to get there except you can bounce ideas with others for your committee). New this year: We spoke to the kindergarten parents at the round up and this year we had a mini committee fair for parents that didn't quite know what they were about. We are also highlighting a committee chair or 2 in each issue of the newsletter, so everyone knows they are having fun and not some super mom knocking themselves out doing all the work. We are hosting a Donuts with Daddy to up the men side of the equation. Although we have 2 male chairs this year and get a great response for field day. Later muffin with moms, ang granola with grandparents. Our meeting are usually 1 hour 20 minutes. We put review of meeting minutes and treasurer reports at the end if people want to stay, guess what the never do. They are available to take home. I believe our meeting attendance is a result of the rest.

Advice: Listen to PTO today and I've learned with K- parents or any new parent no matter how enthusiac let them get there feet wet slowly.

I have to advise against giving children treats if their parents attend the meetings. Apparently before my time our school tried this and there was a HUGE blow up. Lots of trouble. Several parents had to work, had sickness, no car, etc. and were not always able to attend. They were mad because they felt that their children were being punished for something they could not help.

A key to parental involvement (and there are lots of keys) is INFORMATION. Be as informative as you can be, often you feel like you are wasting your time with the newsletters, bulletin boards, web pages, etc., but if you reach one parent it is worth it.

At our PTO meetings we have refreshments (free food!), door prizes for adults and children (usually from the Dollar Store or donated), day care (a local homemakers group volunteer their time), and the teachers from each hall with the most parents attending get a banner and a supply basket (worth about $15). This helped us with attendence.

There is nothing wrong with begging.

As president of my children's elementary school PTA, I have found that a few simple things took us from meetings with 10 volunteers to meetings that are now bringing 35-40 a month. This is what I added:
#1--Child care is provided by the staff
#2--Meetings are held to ONE HOUR max
#3--I send a thank you card every month to the parents that attend the meeting. This is a big one...for the new people that are hesitant to get involved, that added extra "Hey, we noticed that you came out, and appreciate your interest".
#4--Everyone wears a name tag, and we set up the tables "conference style" in a large square so that everyone can see everyone.
#5--We have a coffee hour in the morning, about once every other week, separate from the meeting. We encourage everyone to bring a friend, and we've been able to recruit sooooo many new parents because, we're all connecting on common ground...talking about parenting issues, news, where ever the conversation goes. They're not forced to walk into a meeting where it seems that everyone knows everyone else and you're the odd man out. Let's face it, it can be overwhelming to walk into a group of strangers and find a place to fit in. Once people are comfortable with people, they're DEFINITELY more inclined to offer their assistance at the school!

I hope that you can use one or two of those suggestions...good luck!!!!

People are too busy! If they have to choose between attending an afterschool family event or a PTO/PTA meeting, which would you rather them attend? A school nearby us started having their PTA meetings the first 10 minutes of a big afterschool event. Of course, they would have hundreds of parents and chidren at the event, and they felt they could QUICKLY take care of business. People seemed okay with that PTA doing things that way...but, I don't know if I would want to be so rushed. We actually focused on great evening programs and events and our PTA meetings were attended by more people. I wouldn't take attendance too seriously, though. As long as you have a good board to help run the day to day business of your PTA, then just keep plugging away. Good luck!

We tried the school cash gimmick a couple of years ago, and I hate to say, that many more of them were being redeemed than were given out! I can't believe that elementary kids are that desperate for school store stuff that they were either stealing them or forging them, but I don't know what other explanation there could be. We regularily get about 4 core people at each meeting, and when we polled last year to find out why no one was coming, the answer was that everyone thought that things were being handled well as is, so why come? They had no comments or suggestions because they liked what was being done already. It's nice to know that you are doing a good job, but NOBODY has any new ideas????? One way we got people to come was to have the music teacher do a "concert" with each grade. One month the 2nd graders would come and perform 2-3 songs,and so on, so all of their proud parents would attend to hear them! It worked like a charm, until the music teacher got tired of giving up one night a month to attend too. Our PTO has become a PPO (parent, principal organization)....we have NO TEACHERS!!

(This is my very first post, although I have been a huge fan of this site for about 9 months)

I always thought the best idea to bring parents to meetings was at the PTA (sorry!) of one of the elementaries my daughter attended.

The 5th grade SS curriculum is Core Democratic Values. The 5th grade teachers gave extra SS credit to STUDENTS who attended PTA meetings. (Those little buggers can't drive themselves, can they?) Probably more than half the parents at the meetings were escorting their child.