Our school elected to publish weekly enews instead of the traditional paper newsletter. First, no one likes to ready pages and pages of newsletters. Second, it it very time consuming to put together a newsletter.
So, the weekly e-news is condensed in an easy to read format and gives our families current information on what coming in the next week or so.
We took our school directory and exported all of the email addresses. Those who do not wish to receive it can unsubscribe. We use constant Contact, but there are others out there. If you have under 500 email addresses, it is affordable.
In the end, not only are we saving volunteer manpower on copying, but we are also saving trees in the process.
BTW, we also do classroom Google Groups, which are set up for the sole purpose of discussing classroom parties, homework, etc. Those work great!
Ours are about 2 pages front and back and we copy them at school. We also post the newsletter on our PTA website.
Another options very similar to PEX is
Mailchimp
. I posted about it in other topics but it looks like it works about the same way except that there are no ads. If you have 1,000 or fewer subscribers Mailchimp use is free.
I say this not as any kind of paid advertisement for Mailchimp, just that I searched far and wide for membership/communication management software for our PTA to use and Mailchimp seems to be the best of the bunch for us. It's like Constant Contact if you've ever used that.
We have heard of a lot of schools going paperless to save money and be more environmentally conscious. Here is a link to Parent Express Email-- it is free and simple to use:
1) Keep the newsletter going as a simple 1 page (or max 1 page front/back) document
2) Start a Google Group or other free online collaboration effort. Advertise this in the newsletter and try to get as many families to join as possible. A few caveats on this:
It may be best to set it up as an ANNOUNCEMENTS group where only key people have the power to post messages, rather than a DISCUSSION list which can become a free-for-all if members start posting gripes and issues outside PTO business.
Post valuable information frequently, finding the balance between a good flow of information but not spamming everyone. I'm not a fan of ONLY one messages per month with everything plus the kitchen sink thrown in. Personally, I would rather have topical messages that tell me when deadline hit, upcoming events, reminders of important activities.
We keep it as simple as possible and down to one page. We have found from talking to our parents that many times long and lengthy goes right to the trash can. We have blurbs that are put in our School's Friday Highlights weekly of upcoming events and then try to get a newsletter out every couple of months or so just with upcoming things to look for or information. We print ours right at the school,we have our own printing code for the printers and we supply our own paper.
I'm in charge of the newsletter this year at my son's elementary school. I don't know how they did it before, if at all, but I'm just going to use standard 8.5x11 paper, double sided and try to keep to just 1 page. My goal is a monthly update. I'm getting the school to make the copies. I just need to find out if using PTO paper and copier or the schools. Then the copies go home in the Wed. folders.
My ultimate goal is to use the PEX system for an e-newsletter. Not everyone has the internet but if I can cut back on the number of copies made, I will be very happy. We just started using the PEX system for communicating with the board, other PTO members, and the teachers. So far I love the PEX system.
