I've done our school directory for the past 5 years. The first was the hardest because our school will not provide us with any information. It can only be obtained from the parents/guardians. At registration I have a form that they fill out. Our directory consists of students name, address, phone and parents name. Due to space limitations we list only 1 number. Our book begins with the table of contents, school calendar on the next 2 pages, BOE and Admin, next PTO officers and board, then a list of educators by their grade and class. This is followed by each teacher's class listing the students info. We have 4 or 5 classes per grade level so it starts KA KB KC etc. Each class also contains at the bottom the room coordinators name and phone number for that class. After all the classes are listed I have an alphabetical student list with the page number of where you can find that student. After the first year, I then have forms preprinted with the info the parent had already given me. If everything is correct they just need to sign the form. If there are changes, there is a place to make those changes. We are required to have a signed form each year in order to print their information. In the past they would fill out the form every year. This has saved alot of time and the parents have appreciated not taking the time to repeat the same info. We have about 99% compliance. I receive a form from everyone, but not every family choses to have their info in the directory. We do however include every childs name, it just may not include any of the additional info. My initial spreadsheet is in excel, but the directory is completed in word. I use a 2 column form on regular size paper folded in half. Our fifth grade students design the front and back cover and then the teachers vote on the winners. We are a school of 811 students, so it does take a little time to get going, but after a few years, it's pretty easy. The hardest part is proofing.

Kerri,

We are a brand new school with a brand new PTO and I was wondering the same thing as above. If you are willing to share your format that you made, I would love to use it to try and get a directory together for our school. If you can share please e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Cheers,
Heather Nelson
Colorado

I put our school directory together last year and this year. I can email you our form if you like. Only parents that participate receive the free directory and they can include as much or as little information as they wish. We list name, address, home phone, cell phone, email, student name, grade, and teacher. Then, we organized the names in alphabetical order by parent last name and listed all of the children under their information. Finally, we added cross reference sheets in the back of the directory that included the teacher/grade then student name=parent name. That way parents could easily pick-out classmates and then find out who their parents are. This also helped with the different last name issue. I used Microsoft Word to create the directory and put two columns per page. We had 234 families participate this year. It took my one day to type the inforamation and one day to have our work room print the directories. We used 11 reams of paper and two reams of card stock. It is an inexpensive project for the value it gives to the parents. Good luck!

Kerri
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our homeroom parents put together a list...note sent home in folder asks for infos and permission to distribute your persoanl info/nr to other class parents, and then the list goes out to all class parents.

Our school makes class lists available. Info includes name, dob, parent's names, phone, address & m/f. Parents have the option of having any or all of their family's info excluded from the public list. We only have 1 family that chooses to be excluded. (But, we are a small town, so everyone knows who they are!) This is not something our parent group does, it is put together from info provided by the parents to the school. It has worked pretty well. I would like to have e-mail addresses included (just for my own convenience).
I a lot of schools do not allow invitations to be sent home from school anymore, on the off chance that someone will feel excluded.

Can someone please provide me with information on how their school goes about getting a parent directory together? Our school refuses to hand out birthday invites so how are we going to communicate with the other parents???