Sounds like you've started to make some progress with at least getting some parents to meetings. Perhaps you could find a couple of those parents who would be willing to take a bit more active role in reaching out to other parents and getting them involved.
Have you surveyed your parents to see what they find important in their school and what role they expect parents and a parent group to have in the school? That could give you some insight too.
As for your non-profit status, you can call the IRS and find out if your group has a tax id and you can even go to their website and search for your group to see if they are a recognized non-profit. I'd also start putting together some basic bylaws regarding meetings, elections, board description and officer's job descriptions, so you have some guidelines to follow. What board member requirements are you concerned about?
Kind of seems like your focus at this point should be on the parents and finding ways to get them involved in the school and the rest will kind of follow. Ask parents to volunteer for small simple tasks to kind of get their feet wet and establish a better comfort level for them. I'm sure many are intimidated about coming into the school due to the language barriers and I imagine most of your families have both parents working outside the home which presents problems with being able to come during the school day. Have family events that are free and low cost. They can really build your volunteer base and make parents feel more comfortable in the school.
I have a problem:
I the fall of 2005 I was brought in to our school's PTO to co-run it with a teacher. After 15 years the previous 3 board members were burnt out. There couldn't be elections because at that time nobody came to the meetings except myself. Once myself and the other teacher started running it we did increase attendance at the meetings. This was do in part through publishing our flyers in spanish and potuguese as well as english. We also increased the publicity of our functions as well. We were fresh and had the energy to do this. However, even with meeting and program attendance up, we have not been able to increase involvement. This has also meant no onehas any interest in becoming board members. Due to the fact that the schools population is of direct hispanic or Brazilian decent there are language, cultural, and educational barriers that are difficult for a two man team to overcome. Many are illegal as well. Our poulation is transient and of low socio-economic status. In a school of approximately 325 students there are probably 5 families above the poverty line. On top of all of this our status as tax exempt non-profit is unclear. I can find nothing in our paper work that indicates our status. We use our schools status for fundraisers and pay tax on purchases. If we were to "start fresh" as it were I believe we would have problems fulfilling the board member requirements as well as with voting proceedures. What should we do?
