JHB,
I know just how you feel - is it really worth having a parents group if you're not really needed? I am a parent of a college student, a high school student and an elementary school student. It was a real wake up call when I went to the ms parents meeting. It was run by the Principal, no fundraising and extremely laid back. One of the most frustrating things about Middle School kids is they do not pass on information to the parents. Talking to other parents or at the ms parents meeting I would find out that they needed parents for a certain day - like immigration day or greek day, or whatever and my daughter or son might or might not tell me.
I got in the habit of looking through their backpacks for clues of what was going on. During the 5 years I had kids in the ms we created grade level liasions that would meet with the teachers once a month at their grade level team meeting. We would find out what was going to be happening (more then a weeks warning was great!) and could then call parents who had signed up to help. It took the teachers awhile to get used to having volunteers and realize that we weren't looking to snoop while they teached - we just wanted to help. Once we got the liaisons we put them into the monthly parents meeting and they could report on upcoming events. We also had a parent liaison for the music program.
I started writing a monthly article for the middle school newsletter just to let parents that didn't attend our meetings know what had happened. Since we didn't have any officers, there were no minutes like an elementary parents meeting.
Another thing we did was form a copy committee. One person would come in every morning and the teachers would have what they wanted copied and a form paperclipped to it saying how many copies and when it was needed. That took a little while too for the teachers to get used to because they were used to using the copy machine whenever they wanted and did not like having volunteers running the machine for maybe 2 hours every mornng. However, once they saw that someone else would actually do that tedious job and they just had to plan a little for that time, they really loved it.
I also created a middle school directory. Our elementary schools do that. You have to opt in to get in it and at the ms, we had to have a parents signature - no e-mail addresses. Unfortunately, when my kids left the building no one else continued it.
At our MS, the student council does fundraisers but the parents help with the distribution. Music and Sports teams hold their own fundraisers too and the parents of those kids help out with them.
There's a lot more that we did but some things are our school specific and I don't want to bore you. It's so important though to stay in touch at the MS level. Once my kids got to the hs I was again in the dark and there's not even an attempt to assimilate parents except through sports or music booster groups. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me.
I'd like to hear from some of you involved in middle school (6th-8th) activities and parent groups. Our middle school PTO is very informal, plays a minimal role, and is in danger of being eliminated by the principal.
I've been asked if I would be willing to run it next year, but I'm not prepared to mount the (probably hopeless) crusade to try to duplicate the formal, successful structure we have in elmentary.
What roles do your PTO/PTA have in middle school? How many activities do you run? What type? Do you hold fundraisers?
We have so many groups (band, athletics, after school programs, Girl Start, etc.) that I'm not convinced we need a formal PTO. And heaven knows we don't need yet another group doing fundraisers. However, I don't want to close the door completely to parent involvement and communication.
I would be interested in a group that has no financial role but meets maybe quarterly with the principal and serves to recruit volunteers for a few events.
Can those of you involved in middle school chime in with information about your groups?
