Obviously ladies, I'm not going anywhere. As a stay-at-home mom of three, my job is to keep involved and apprised as to the happenings in my children's school(s). I will continue to visit this forum often and with others reading, perhaps more "old-timers" will join us. I'm not ready to "jump ship" just because my kids are getting older and I certainly don't have all the answers. :confused: That's why I visit this forum often. As parents, we need to decide where our talents can best be utilized for the grade level our children are in. Being a bit more agressive than some, I continue to keep my "foot in the door" to better my children's schools and future. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something! [img]smile.gif[/img]

As us "oldtimers" stick around on this forum, our little elementary kids are destined to become middle schoolers (like mine). Over time, our needs as forum participants will evolve and I think our forum content will naturally take on a more "middle school" perspective.

As a parent of both (middle school and elementary), I think M.S. topics are still the same general categories you see here - fundraising, school family nights, management issues, parent involvement, etc. You are right, academic topics would probably fit under "Free for All".

If we had a topic just for older kids, my opinion is that it would just become a cluttered "miscellaneous".

I'd suggest just giving it a meaningful subject title and posting it where it fits. All the subjects have their own "lifespan". Sometimes one is active for days, sometimes weeks. And sometimes someone bumps up an old topic to make it current. You can always do that.

I do like this forum but would really like more parents of older kids involved. Younger kid parents may have an "opinion" but until you've done duty in middle school, those opinions don't have as much weight, at least in my eyes.

It would be nice to just have another topic like middle school and high school issues. I'd like to talk about what kind of math different middle and high schools offer, does your ms have foreign languages and if so, how often? How about keyboarding - is that in hs and/or ms? Where would that stuff go on this bb? If I stick in "what are we forgetting?" it would be gone within a day. Any suggestions, Tim?

Kathie,
Referring to your post of 5/22, please don't feel you have to leave because you have older children. I have three girls attending different levels of school, sophmore, 7th and my youngest in 4th. This puts me in a high, middle and elementary school level. Just this past school year, we re-built our middle school PTO and it was a very successful year. We re-opened the communication lines for those parents who can't be involved and have opened the door for many of those who want to be involved. We requested e-mail addresses so parents could be informed of the current happenings at the school. Most recently, I just finished the process of incorporating a PTO for the new elementary school that my 4th grader will be attending this fall. I'm looking forward to a brand new group and will need all the help I can get. This site has proved to be very helpful on all levels and for the parents of "older" children, let's not leave the site but start asking more questions pertaining to our PTO situations and/or problems. Kathie, there are bound to be more parents out there who are in our boat! By the way, I read this site on an average of three times a week and post randomly when I feel that I have some "words of wisdom" (at least in my own mind) to add.

If most "newbies" are like me, then they've been lurking here for over a year. [img]smile.gif[/img] It's sick the amount of time I spend here reading. As far as I'm concerned, this is THE go-to spot for information when I have a PTSO related concern.