I am a Title I Family Rep at a Junior High school and it is hard to get parents to come with their Jr. High students and get students to invite their parents to attend events. One thing that works at my school is biggy-back another event (athletic game), invite the band or choir to perform (their parents will show up), include an RSVP form on the invitation so parents can fill it out (include name, how many people will attend and contact info)- this will help in determining how many people will come. Another good way to get parents and students to come is ask Stu-co or NJHS to come and help out (they get service hours for this). Of course you would want to purchase a little more ice cream than what you estimated attendance will be- just in case (if you have extra, you can always put it in the teacher's lounge and they will love it). Make sure the flyer is attractive to Jr. High students and informative to Jr. High parents. Sending post cards is a good idea b/c it is more personalized. Hopefully this helps
Thank you for the suggestions. At our elementary school PTA we use a similar method to gauge how many people will be attending events. It worked very well.
Our concern is that middle school students do not always show parents fliers from school (we are sending a postcard to make sure parents know about the event). We are not charging for the evening so a pre-pay won't work.
We have done pizza dinners like this (elementary school, so it's a little different). We've sent home a flyer announcing the event, with a tear off section at the bottom asking people to indicate how many slices of pizza they would like, and then sending it back into the school. No money is sent back, no names are attached to the slips, we just ask people to help us with planning.
After we have a number of "slices", we add 10 - 20 %. We've never had a problem with having too much left over; if we have some remaining, we'll sell an entire pie at a discount. Ice cream might be a little different, though.
I guess that you could as the kids to pay ahead ($2 in advance, $3 day of, for example), and give them tickets for admittance? My son's middle school does their dances this way.
Our Middle School PTA is planning an Ice cream/Game night for February (snowdate in early March). We will be using our cafeteria and gym for the event. We are planning to raffle off door prizes (games/sports equipment, etc.) This is our first attempt at an event like this. How can we determine how many people will be attending? We will be mailing home a postcard with the details so that it actually makes it into the parents hands! Also, we want to create some excitement about the event so that Middle School students (who often don't want to be seen with their parents) will want to attend. Any ideas?
