Thanks for your advise and infomation, I will be sure to pass along to members at the meeting. I know when there is a family fun night there is always a good turn out, and parents do step up to help at these events, and also just step in and help a child or clean up. So in this aspect we have allot of great parents and involvement.

I hope I get to go to Davis's next meeting's. I couldn't stop laughing at the first one. I couldn't decide if it was a comedy show of a meeting, but when I left I knew what was going on and what I was going to do to help. I've never seen a meeting organized like that before. I thought I was going back on school myself, but this time it was fun. They brought food to their meeeting. That solved one of the problems I had.

They had babysitting in the very next room. They were organized with games. It wasn't just kids watching my small miracle. Davis had the adult nursery workers from a local church. I felt I knew the workers before I arrrived at the meeting, and I don't even go to that church. They didn't call it babysitting, they called it fun time. Yes, they had food in this room too, but not the stuff I eat, they had the stuff my kid would eat.

Is this what a parent would say when they leave your meeting?

Davisx2;138163 wrote: Hello everyone!

Last night I was disappointed in the fact only 11 people/members were at our meeting. How do we get more parent involvement to support or student/children/school? One sugestion was to incorporate babysitting service in school for parent to attend (free of charge)

Hi Davis -

You're on a good track thinking about these things. And you'll find tons and tons of insight on this topic here at ptotoday.com. Grab a cup of coffee and start surfing and printing.

Biggest thing I'd recommend to start is to start defining involvement as the "number of people who attend our meetings". That's a guaranteed recipe for frustration. There's a universal truth about meetings -- they stink! You can offer babysitting and pull a raffle prize, etc. -- all fine ideas -- but none of them will find you suddenly with hundreds at your meetings listening to your minutes and committee reports. Just won't happen.

Good news -- it doesn't need to happen.

Better by far to look more at: number of folks attending family events ( School Family Nights ) and number of parents connecting with school in some way or number of parents getting more comfortable interacting with your school and one another. That's where the great stuff happens.

I wrote a column on this some time ago: www.ptotoday.com/articles/article.php?article=0805tim.html

Hope it helps. Good luck with your efforts!

Tim

It's tough for a lot of parents due to activity schedules. Right now in our town we have girls and boys soccer, travel baseball, fall little league, pop warner football, dance, karate and gymnastics classes and religious education all going on. Parent may not have time.
Keep the line of communication open with your parents so they know what is going on. You may want to put the minutes of your meeting on line so they can keep up if they cannot attend. Put out your memos for events early enough so parents can volunteer (also post all your dates of your planned events so they can plan around them). parents may not want to be on the coordination side, but will volunteer their hour or so that day.

Don't be discouraged since we've all been through it. If you keep holding the door open, you'll get some to walk through!

Hello everyone!

I just joined the PTO last night. We are a recently consolidated school of 3 towns. Last night I was disappointed in the fact only 11 people/members were at our meeting. How do we get more parent involvement to support or student/children/school? One sugestion was to incorporate babysitting service in school for parent to attend (free of charge)

Has anyone else out there consolidated and trouble getting parents from all the towns/ communities involved?

We have advertised, sent home flyers, offered free membership to all who will join this year, any other idea's to encourage parent to get involved? TIA