Hello to all of you who are in need of help! I had a great idea from two years ago come into play just this year! It was suggested that the ENTIRE DIRTICT WIDE PTO BOARDS conduct a meeting to share ideas, paperwork, problems. It was a HUGE success! I have been a volunteer for 5 years and on the board for 3 years. 2years as secretary and 1 as president. There are 25 elementary schools in my district, Utica Michigan, soon to be 26 with a new Elementary school opening up in Fall 2002. 23 of them are PTO's! The feed back on the idea was great! I put out a personnal phone call or letter to each president or other board member from each school, told them the idea and that it was not mandatory they come but come and check it out and show your support, told them my PTO Board will host the 1st meeting and we will have 2 meetings of this kind each school year. One in Fall and one in Spring. At the Fall meeting another school offered to host the Spring meeting. This way we get to visit all of the schools in our district. Through my invitation, I made an agenda of topics that were in need of answers through talking to the other schools PTO Boards. Also, asked them to bring copies of their agenda and meeting minutes, by-laws, newsletters, budget reports, copies of flyers about fundraisers or programs and events, anything that they thought could help us out with new ideas. I did not invite the principals to this meeting as it was set up more for the PTO Board to inquire about their positions. It turned out to be a small crowd that night about 1-4 parents showed up from 13 schools to show their support. What a MECHA of information!!!!! We heard how the other schools worked and talked endlessly how we could improve ourselves. Spoke of problems with staff, principals and volunteers. It was like the PTOtoday.com COME ALIVE! These are parents from your school district who are your neighbors and sister schools. Getting anothers imput like the president from one school asking another president from their sister school advice how to handle a certain situation. Or the secretaries and treasurers who were sharing the names of the computer programs for their newsletters and budget reports. We served pop/coffee and treats from 7:00-9:00 p.m. and didn't get out of there until after 10:30. We also exchanged names and phone numbers so we could keep in contact with the troubled schools or each other for support. We couldn't cover everything but it was a great start! In the spring we will invite the newly elected board of 2002-2003 to come and ask their own questions and meet the other schools. I can't say this enough, this meeting helped us so much and I supported the idea not just for me but for all the newcomers who really didn't want to be on the board or had doubts about their positions and all of those unanswered questions out there! I am looking forward to the District Wide PTO Boards meeting coming in May 2002. If this is something you are interested in you can e-mail me and I will offer you all of my ideas from the packets I put together to the format or what ever you need. I am so thankful those other parents came to support this. Even if you think about doing this, make it personnal!, personnal phone calls and letters to the other PTO Boards. These people have it the same with work, kids, dinner, laundry, soccer practice and their PTO. You are not alone and just knowing that does make the difference and also knowing they are there to support you, Well, that makes it all worth it! Hope to hear from you all soon. And by the way what other paperwork were you inquiring about? Through this meeting I spoke of, we made use of all the paperwork they shared. We improved our bi-laws to sound better and to contain almost everything you could think of, changed our Welcome PTO letter and added some great new program, activities and event ideas for the next school year. Even impoved our finacial reports! Don't get me wrong even I have had some problems but, smmmoooth sailing for me so far this year!
