Parent involvement at school
Moms View Message Board: Parenting Discussion: Archive January-June 2004:
Parent involvement at school
What ways do parents get involved in your kids elementary school?
I know this question is as vague as my last one. I apologize for that. The reasons for these questions are a bit too long and probably uninteresting to have you read it all. LOL. That's why I am trying to be short and to the point.
So what ways can parents get involved? And if your school has a PTA/PTO/Parents Club, what kinds of things does it do? What is it's purpose and approximately what is the attendance like for meetings? If it's not run the way you think it should be, what should be different?
Thank you all for your help! 
Never got involved in PTA! LOL! I helped out in the classroom a lot when my kids were little! Most of that time I wasn't working, so I went on field trips and did stuff when they had parties and other special events. My girls both had the same 3rd grade teacher and every week, I typed spelling words into the computer to make everyone a personalized spelling list for the end of the unit. At the end of the unit, I had to print out copies for kids to study from. I did this for both of my daughters when they had that teacher. ( I got nice presents from her for doing that, too!)
Classroom, library, science lab, field trips, office help.
Our PTA is very project/goal oriented rather than meeting driven. Our school must raise in excess of $100K every year to make up for what we don't receive in state funding so our PTA is very active in various fundraising activities/committees. Plus there are all sorts of enrichment comittees on the PTA. There are monthly board meetings for the officers that everyone is welcome to attend. There are once a quarter program type meetings.
We have a school carnival that is a fund raiser every spring (usually nets $40,000). You are expected to work at bare minimum of 30 minutes per each child attending in one of the various booths.
Here is how our PTA is divided up.
Executive Committee:
President:
1st Vice President:
2nd Vice President:
3rd Vice President:
Recording Secretary:
Corresponding Secretary:
Treasurer:
Parliamentarian:
Principal:
Standing Committees continued:
Library: Long Range Planning:
Marquee:
Math Stars:
McGruff: Membership:
Standing Committees:
Art Volunteer:
Auction - Fall 2004:
Box Tops for Education/Campbells:
Carnival:
Computer Liaison:
Cultural Arts:
Directory:
Facilities Enhancement:
Building:
Landscape:
Playground:
Fall Family Fun Night:
5th Grade Peer Group:
Food Service:
Historian:
Hospitality:
International Liaison:
Notification:
Paw Print Express:
PTA Newsletter:
Public Relations:
Reflections:
Room Mothers:
Running for the Arts:
Safety Patrol:
School Supplies 2003-2004:
School Supplies 2004-2005:
Science:
Special Events:
Special Projects:
Sally Foster:
Shirts/Spirit:
Skating Party:
Teacher Appreciation:
Volunteer Chairman:
Welcome:
Wildcat Tracks:
Copying/Xeroxing:
I am a room mother and I coordinate all the school parties Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines, End of the Year. I send notes home to the parents and ask for items.
We do a fall festival and this year I helped get the items for the silent auction and helped with clean up. Annie, how big is your school??? Our PTO is set up horrible and I am very disappointed with it.
I go on all field trips and attend everything available for the parents: pep ralley's, family reading night, parent day, etc.
I would love to be able to volunteer at the school one day a week but with the two little one's this is impossible for me.
(....as I rise to my soap box....) Parents who do not get involved really bother me, some have ligitimate reasons but there is always an opportunity to do something that will work with thier hours. My brother was one who never would, "we pay taxes so they can do their job". Nothing angers me more than narrow minded attitudes like this. As a parent who could possibly care more about your child's education? If we fail to show our children it is important to us, then it will not be important to them.....stepping off the soap box.
It's around 500, I think. Yes, our PTA is set up really well. There is some cliquishness, but for the most part, it's accessible to everyone and we all get our jobs done.
There are always going to be people who do more than others. I have had times in our elementary school, where I have been very involved and then I have had times where I have stepped back and not done a thing.
My son's school has a parent's association. I pay to be a member, but the meetings are 10am on a weekday and I work so I don't attend meetings.
Parent's involvement is limited to fundraising. Parent's are not involved in the running of the school at all. No parents in the classrooms, the libraries or the offices, no where, except the parent's area in the atrium of the school. Oh, and they run the school store in the mornings before school. Sometimes moms drive on field trips if they don't lease a bus.
Homeroom moms are told what to do by the school as far as class parties and they are the only ones permitted at parties. Oftentimes a class will go skating or something like that instead of having a party, like a Halloween party or something.
Parents are not to walk their kids in either in the mornings, except the first day of school is okay, but even that they discourage. It would not be atypical to only enter the school for the 3 parent teacher conferences and that's it for the whole year.
This is a private school for bright kids who have learning differences.
I have 2 friends at two different public schools that have similar rules. No parents in the schools at all. In both cases the school came to that rule bec so many mothers would just hang out there and the staff couldn't stand it. Some moms wanted to watch their kids all day. Worry about them, make sure nothing bad happened to them, reasons like that.
So, not all schools want a lot of parent involvement.
I think there has to be a balance. I can't imagine my kids' principal enjoying moms hanging out all day either!
Wow Laura, I am stunned by the policies of those schools. I agree with Annie completely-there should be a balance. I don't agree with parents just hanging out at the school socially and I also wouldn't want to see parents trying to run a school, if you KWIM. But I can't imagine not utilizing the energy of parents who truly want to work to make the school better.
Annie, thank you so much for taking the time to tell me the set-up of your PTA. We have a Parents Club at our school that is in sad shape right now. There are four members who are good friends, communicate only by phone, meet when it's convenient for them (no set times and not publicized), and make no effort whatsoever to draw in more people. I attended one meeting and was so completely turned off I never returned. I have talked to many others who have had the exact same experience. I think we are missing a huge resource here.
We have a new principal at our school. A small group of us have arranged a meeting with her tomorrow. She wants to hear what we as parents have as priorities for the school, and we are interested in hearing her vision for the school. We are all interested in putting our energy together to make this school the best it can be. It is a very small school with only 140 students. There are a lot of parents willing to pitch in where it is needed. We just need the leadership to pull it all together.
At the meeting I am leading the portion on parent involvement. Right now parents can get involved if they are assertive. At the beginning of the year we all fill out a form that asks how we would like to volunteer. But those forms just sort of disappear afterwards. People who say they are willing to help in the library, for example, are never contacted. And the library staff never even gets a list of names of people who said they would do that. It makes no sense. I read a great quote by a teacher earlier today. It said, "Every parent has something they can offer, they just need to hear someone say that we need you." I completely agree with that.
Thank you everyone for your responses. My wheels are turning. I don't want to go into the meeting with criticism without any ideas for solutions. That's not helpful. I had a great conversation last week with the principal and am very excited to meet with her tomorrow as I think she has great ideas for this school. She's the third principal in 2.5 years, so there has been no consistency as the school ever since we've been in it. That's really hard to deal with. We have a wonderful school with a great deal of potential. I am looking forward to positive things happening.
Melanie, that's one of the main reasons our PTA is set up the way it it..to utilize all the parents. The libary chairman is the one that gets the sheets and coordinates the volunteers. And so on. It really helps the person wanting to volunteer to know who exactly to contact.
Another thing we do is in the info pack sent home the first day of school is a sheet that has all the volunteer opportunities on it and the parents sign up for what they want. Then that sheet goes to the room mother who takes down the names of people who have signed up for classroom stuff, she then gives it to the room mother coordinator who makes sure it gets to the auction, carnival, library ect chairman.
It might seem like alot of chiefs and no indians, but we have found that by having alot of positions helps spread out the responsibilty and the burdern..one person isn't trying to do everything. We have also found this seems to be a more inclusive way of doing it too. People don't seem so timid about stepping forward to volunteer if it looks like everyone is doing it.
Good luck with your meeting with the principal!
Annie, I love the way your PTA is set up. I love that there are so many different committees focusing on specific areas. Everyone has interests and strengths in different places. I can read through your list and pick out several things I would get involved with and several others I would stay away from. How nice to be able to pick and choose!! What turned me off of our parents club is exactly what you said: it was just a couple of people doing a bunch of work. They were planning the Halloween carnival at the meeting I attended and they were dividing a ton of work between the four of them. There was no discussion on how to recruit more helpers. They were just doing it. There was no way I was going to dive in that deep.
Right now requests to parents are done in a "parking lot conversation" kind of way. For instance, a couple days ago I was picking my son up from school. Several moms were standing outside and one commented in front of the teacher that we should work on the landscaping in front of their class. The teacher said the kids are doing just that, but they need a truckload of dirt to really do it. The next day one of the mom's that was standing there had her truck full of dirt for them. The teacher happened to say it to the right person, but how many other things are needed, whether it be in *stuff* or energy, that we are missing? It would be so nice for us to have actual committees so the teachers know just who to go to when they need something or need something done. Most of the parents I know want to do something to make the lives of our teachers a bit easier so they can focus on what they are paid to do: teach our kids. We just need an organized system for doing that.
Thanks again Annie. I really enjoy hearing what you have to say.
Thanks! It sounds like you are off to a great start for your meeting. You have some real concrete solutions to the problems you are seeing. I agree, it's so important to offer suggestions and not just complain.
Wow Laura that is unreal! Our state awards our schools additional funding for more parent involement. Parents sign everytime they enter and based on the number of signatures they get additional funding. Studies show time and time again that parent involement is very important. Parents are encouraged to come sit in the classroom and observe if they like, anything. We have to walk in to pick up everyday.
I agree there needs to be a balance but there also needs to be lots of oppurtunity so all the parents have a chance.
Annie, your PTA sounds wonderful...I am going to send ours that way for some training. They are also a click of 5 close friends and only involve the other parents when it is fall festival and they need their help...Haven't heard a word from them since September. There are lots of parents out there with many talents and resources that could greatly benefit the children and they are completely ignoring them.
Well, I can understand at my son's private school why they have the parent's focus on fundraising only. The school is very structured and the method very exact in how they teach these dyslexic kids to read and write. It would be very distracting to their methods to have parents around. The school has a lot of money, they are 9 kids in a class, lots and lots of support staff, and there is no need for parents inside the school. Fundraising the parents do well, though. They raised $190,000 at the auction in February.
Now these two public schools, well, that was a total surprise to me! My aunt works at one of them and she told me about it when they made the new "no parents" policy. Some of it is safety, too. Just bec someone is a parent doesn't mean they are sane! Also, my aunt said some parents just weren't ready to cut the apron strings. The staff joked about telling the moms to get a real job so they could do theirs.
The other school I referred to had 1,000 kids in it and way too many moms hanging around. They instituted their no parents policy blaming the size of the school, but my friend was on the PTA board and they told her too many moms were hanging out all day almost in spy mode, looking for problems and it was all too distracting for the kids. My friend called me to read the memo they distributed about it. She thought it was sortof strange even though she worked full time and was not one of the moms who lived at the school.
Now the public school we came from welcomed parents and I was up there a lot even though I worked. I did see the same moms eating lunch with their kids every day which I thought was weird. Every day? But the school depended on the moms to stuff the Go Home packets every week, help in the library and office.
I think our school has a nice balance. Things are set up very similar to what Texannie posted. I would not be comfortable at all sending my daughter to a school that didn't welcome parents. If they had problems with specific things parents were doing, they should address those issues, not ban parents all together!! I am sure it works out great at your school, but I can tell you it wouldn't fly for one second where I am!! LOL
I have never felt unwelcome as a parent at any school my kids have attended. I would hate not ever being able to be at school, at least when my kids were little, anyway.
It's funny, just yesterday our new PTA president sent out a memo that she was fillings jobs. I emailed her with the 3 that I was interested in and she emailed me back telling me which position I got. (5th grade peer group)
LOL Annie, perfect timing!
We had a great meeting with the principal. We talked for two hours and barely even touched on the whole parents club issue! We focused mostly on academic issues and communication issues. We did touch on this a bit and now a group of us are going to step up to try to make changes here.
As I mentioned, our current Parents Club has four members. Three of them are the same ones who have been doing it for four or five years. The fourth is actually one of the mom's who met with us yesterday who has a son in kindergarten. She says the other three are really burned out (no kidding!) and are ready to change. Woo Hoo!! We don't want to step on their toes at all. We just want to get more people involved and have the club do more. So the mom who met with us yesterday is going to suggest to them at their next meeting that we arrange an evening meeting and we will bring in more people and reorganize the way it's run. I've talked to many people who said they would get involved if it were run different. Wish us luck. It's a big task, but I think we can do it.
I may put up a post to you at some point Annie looking for tips. Would that be okay? Nothing major of course, but just to get your suggestions since you are involved in a PTA that appears to be running quite well.
Sounds like your meeting went great!! It also sounds like it's perfect timing to get it all reorganized.
Sure, feel free.
I'm involved in PTO, and I am the organizer for a writing program each year. We have parents who organize a Bitty Basketball program every year, and there are some who do a tiny bit of volunteering in the classroom. This is a sore subject for me, because we have had some major cuts in staff (both teachers and aides), and as a result, we will not have anyone running the library at the elementary level. The PTO asked if we could have it open using parent volunteers, and have also asked to use parent volunteers to pick up slack in classrooms and on the playground, and we were firmly told no. The teachers' union won't let us, and if we tried, there'd be a lawsuit. Makes me angry.
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