Congratulation to Satellis and CoriT. You are the people that can set an example of how it should be.
If I were you, I'd remain highly positive. People are attracted to success. Say good things. I wouldn't bring up the turnout too much. It might scare off others.
You're just going to have to grin and bear it. My first PTO meeting was last night. We put an ad in the paper, sent fliers home with the kids, etc., and we had 2 families represented, 1 teacher and the principal. We talked about what we could do and we are sending home another letter today to ask parents to volunteer 2 hours a year and a try to get an idea of what they would like to do. The principal is going to try to talk it up to the teachers and we are going to try to get the teachers to talk it up to the parents, and we will wait for a response to come back from this letter we are sending home.
So, all I can say is 'Stick to it, your school needs you.'
Okay, our very first PTO meeting of the year is tomorrow night. It should be interesting to see what happens. We are also holding our book fair tomorrow from 3-7pm. The PTO meeting starts at 6:30pm. We also planned a Build-a-book party at the same time to occupy the kids.
See, the theory we are testing is whether or not more parents will come since they are already there for the book fair and will more parents come if there is something for their kids to do while they are at the meeting.
This is going to either be incredibly successful or a complete and utter disaster. The closer we get to tomorrow night, the more butterflies I get in my stomach.
Personally, I'm exhausted from running the Book fair for the past week and will be spending the entire day starting at 7:30am at school finalizing everything for tomorrow night. The biggest problem I am facing is what they heck am I going to say to the parents tomorrow night to make them glad they came to the PTO meeting.
Last year we had 1, yes you read that right, 1 PTO meeting the entire year. And it consisted of lots of parents coming, the principal speaking maybe 5 minutes, a short discussion of what the PTO could do this year and then they served refreshments and left. So, I feel like turn out is not going to be big. But regardless, I want those that do take the time to come to want to come again...and again...and again...
The plan for the meeting so far is to do a short welcome (and introduction?) and then our reading specialist is going to do about a 20 minute powerpoint on reading strategies that parents can do at home, etc. to tie in with the Book Fair and the Build-a-book party. After that I want to break out into groups that would each focus on something. For instance, one group would talk about what forms of communication they would like to see the PTO use and what the PTO should communicate, one group would brainstorm ideas for the Spring Fun festival, etc.
Please tell me if this is going to be a snoozer of a meeting. I'd rather face the harsh reality now and regroup that face the fallout after the fact.
