We too have had the problem of all our hard worked put together "information" not making it home. This year, we have coordinated with the schools (our PTO handles three schools) to have our newsletter stapled to their monthly calendar. So far, so good. Parents love that information from the school and PTO are in one place.
I had to smile when I read this thread. At my school, our newsletter is now done by a parent who is also the school district's PR person. And guess what? It's terrible -- the writing is poor, graphics are bad, and it is often incomplete or just plain out of date. But no one will say anything bad about it because of this person's position in the district. Oh well...
AGHHHH, I feel your pain. The newsletter is hard work. It bites to see the wrong one get printed.
I do the newsletter at our school. Last year I submitted the first one to the Principal for approval and haven't submitted another one since. Other than doing a grammar check, I don't know what submitting to the principal will accomplish. All articles submitted by teachers have already gone through her and any content by the PTA is filtered by the PTA President.
I usually try to put out an 8 page newsletter (both sides of 2 11X17 sheets) and print them on the school printer with paper purchased by the PTA. It takes 3 hours to make copies, fold, assemble, sort and deliver to the classrooms. Then there is the time that goes into cajoling teachers into submitting material, retypeing submissions, writing articles, researching dates for the calender, scanning art work, seeking out photos, etc, and in putting all this together in the newsletter. If someone wants to stand over me and dictate what i can and can not put in the newsletter, then they can do it themselves [img]smile.gif[/img]
I'm sure all the mismatched socks are with all the missing school flyers in one huge Black Hole. And our old principal had a Black Hole in his desk too! You never placed anything on it if you wanted it to reappear! Thank goodness our school Secretary is such a gem! We wouldn't ever survive without our Super Secretary!!!
Best Wishes to all you sending our Flyers and Newsletters this year, we are sure going to need it!
Like many of you, we had similar problems in publishing our newsletter. The infamous Black Hole on the Principal's desk, which resulted in a newsletter being lost before it was approved; the ours collecting news, publishing it, and not to mention all of the copying and coalating since we didn't send it out to a printer. The result, this year we had no one who volunteered for the position. Consequently, as PTO President I decided it was high time we joined the electronic age and created a website for the PTO which would include all of the info we would publish in a newsletter. I went to Yahoo Geocities and discovered that for $15 set-up fee and $9/month, we could create such a web site. I was a little concerned about how difficult it might be, but was pleasantly surprised by the tools available and simplicity. We have notified parents that this is how we will be distributing our newsletter, and that if you do not have internet access, there will be a limited number of copies available at the office and we will post a copy in the entrance. It is VERY easy to update on a continual basis, but I do set a deadline for submission of articles. I do get approval for articles or items which may deem it necessary, but as for the most of it, we just publish it. We are still waiting for a letter from the Principal to publish, but now we are still able to get information out to the parents in a timely manner which would not be happening if we were printing it. Also, we are saving money by doing it this way, as well as volunteer hours.
