We increased our number of people at our meetings by networking. I had my friends go out and personally recruit people. It worked well for my fist year the best. They said come and support the new chairman, she really needs some back up. Now we have a decent turn out at all of our meetings. The Boo Hoo Breakfast also helped in recruiting new "K" parents. Good Luck!
We have each teacher designate a Student of the Month for every class. Then at the meeting we hand out a certificate. Do a whole presentation at the end of the meeting. Since we are a K-8, this guarantees quite a few parents.
That is one of the best suggestions for increasing (or creating!) parent attendance at meetings. Simple, but BRILLIANT! I'm definitely going to bring this up at our next board meeting.
I'm just curious on how anyone gets parents to attend PTO/PTA meetings. This is one way that we do it. When any parent signs up to be a Class Rep, we tell them that it is a requirement to attend all PTA/PTO meetings. Some classes have more than one rep due to size. We tell them that they can work it out amongst themselves on which meeting that they want to attend, but each class must have a representative at all meetings. Class rep is a hot thing in our school (especially in the lower grades) If they miss any number of meetings, then they will no longer be class rep. All Class Reps are picked by the PTA. We also make it a requirement for all Committee Chairs to attend the meetings. This wasy we get a large attendence and volunteers.
