we offer grade level grants to our teachers. These "grant" applications are provided to the grade level team leads as well as our specialty teachers (PE, drama, art, music, etc). The applications had to be used for the purchase of items that would support the entire grade level, had to be labeled donated by the PTO and were property of the school (and could not leave the classroom if the teacher moved to another school). The applications had to be approved by the Principal and then we would fund the grants. Each grade level received a $500 grant this year and the specialty teachers that support all grade levels received $1000 for each specialty area.
As for the smaller items that a teacher needs specific to their classroom, our teachers put up sticky notes on the whiteboard during the meet the teacher night and parents are encouraged to fulfill the items. We also receive email requests from the teacher on an as needed basis.
We have little participation by our teachers at the school carnival or family fun nights...and our principal does not require attendance by the staff as it is their own time. I liked President Jim's idea to have a teacher raffle...might have to bring that up to the PTO.
Unfortunetely I have found that even if you go to the extent that you are going to (providing purchases for the teachers) that it will not lead to increased activity at your events.
What I have found is this...
If the event is focused on a specific grade the teachers from that grade end up feeling like they "must" attend the event. For example, we usually only get one or two teachers at all of our events, from the Rollar Skating parties to the seasonal events. But when we have the first grade family night it seems that all of the first grade teachers show up. I think they must feel that they are being compared to the other grade specific teachers and that they must show up for something like this.
I have tried specifically providing invitations to each teacher for our events, and that doesn;t seem to work either. For our meetings, other than the Principal, we almost never get anyone to come out.
But here's the thing...
I have found one way to increase teacher and staff attendance at our events. For our Back to School event we created a couple of staff baskets with items we knew they would want. Items such as automatic staplers, high end calculators, gift certificates for a massage or facial, etc. We promoted that these baskets would be raffled off to any staff member that is in attendance at our event, and wouldn;t you know it, we ended up with more than 75% of the teachers there.
We made the baskets up ahead of time and placed them in the front office for all to see.
The one thing I did wrong was that I raffled these off about half way through the event. And the moment the raffle was over it was like the staff created a congo line for the exit.
This told me that the only reason that they were attending was for the raffle, which does show how good this idea is.
So my recommendation would be to not just buy them stuff, but to raffle items that they would like at your next event.
to help out our teachers with things like this we sent our a request to all teachers to make a list of those items they need through out the year. We then turned those lists into wish lists for donations to parents and guardians. Last year the secratary took the time to make it a per class list. this year it will be a "generic" list to all parents. We then also looked for the things that would most likely not be supplied by parents and we supplied these as winter/christmas gifts to the teachers.
I guess right now to start out it would be essential items we will see if we can help out if you need it and it falls under our guidelines right now it looks like between $150.00-$175.00 for the year under the current budget that the 2007-2008 PTO just inherited per teacher. We are a new board trying to help out where the old board just said no.
thanks for the input so far
What we called the Teacher wishlist was a list of small items that we published for each teacher and encouraged donations from parents. It was sort of a calendar layout with each row being a grade and each block being a class. Each teacher could list 5 or 6 items.
But these were usually on the inexpensive side - reams of colored paper, white board markers, school supplies, craft supplies. We collected all the information, published the list, and promoted it to ALL parents.
We're going to send ours to team leads only. This way we don't make too big a deal about it, only to disappoint the teachers later that we cannot meet all their requests.
We'll position it this way: Items less than $200 more likely to get approved. Items that help the whole school or team more likely to get approved than those that help a single teacher. Items that directly benefit students in some way are more likely to get approved than those that don't.
