Originally posted by DaveP: There seems to be an underlining thread to most of the problems I am reading here and it is a lack of parental and school involvement beyond a certain point and no documentation so that problems like this can be readily solved.
Dave
Now - haven't you hit the nail on the head! The first meeting at our middle school, most would think, was exceptionally well attended with probably 30 people there . . . there are 1800 students, so is that so wonderful? Personally I think that email may be the greatest tool any PTO can have - if you send an email about PTO and it gets forwarded around and you can develop a database from it - you're doing well. Anyone who gets on my PTO email distribution list doesn't get off without asking, and very few ask. They may just delete a lot of email, but every once in a while you get a new hard working volunteer this way. No - not enough parents are involved and yes - a few people do the majority of the work, that's unfortunately just the way it is.
Does a company come to your school for class/student pictures? Usually they will have a yearbook division and since they've already taken the pictures, it's a lot easier to put a book together. In addition to the classroom pages, we added a Principal's message, staff page, autograph/blank pages, library/p.e./music, student council, gifted & talented, "Love Lines" where anyone could buy a message to send to a child or teacher in the school, spring carnival and other school events.
Your school involvement sounds a lot like ours.. a few people doing all the work. We asked all the teachers to find a parent in their classroom to work on their individual classroom page. You'd be surprised at how many teachers will volunteer to put together their classroom page themselves, too. Try to find parents that enjoy scrapbooking to help you out with the other pages for special events. A yearbook is a huge amount of work, but if you can divide up the labor, life will be much easier for your parent group. Good luck!
I'm really not sure what (if anything) the board did. All I know is the one teacher that was in charge of it last year is no longer there. I thought about going to the school board meeting this coming month and maybe asking questions on this. They may be able to help with it.
Lack of parental involvement is the "understatement" of the year. There are about 3-5 of us that are really involved and and 3 out of the five are PTO officers and as I said, we have approximately 600 students.
Thanks for your reply.
We do one every year there are several companies that do year books! PTO Today has in the resources section links to some of these. I have another quesiton though, why is it only one person worked on this in the prior year? What did your board do on this? There seems to be an underlining thread to most of the problems I am reading here and it is a lack of parental and school involvement beyond a certain point and no documentation so that problems like this can be readily solved.
THE PRINCIPLE OF OUR SCHOOL APPROACHED ME AND ANOTHER PARENT ABOUT DOING THE ANNUAL FOR THE YEAR. THE TEACHER THAT DID IT LAST YEAR IS NO LONGER THERE. WE ARE A SCHOOL OF APPROXIMATELY 600 STUDENTS. HAS ANYONE EVER DID AN ANNUAL...NEED HELP.
THANKS,
TRICIA
