Your district sounds much like ours. Our high school started a PTO about 2 years ago. I know the pres, but I am not sure what all they do. I assume they supplement programs that cannot raise enough money for their events and also this year they have a scholarship for students whose parents are members.
Aside from some of the rural areas here, it's been a long time since one of the bigger high schools had a PTSA. But this last year, one of the southern high schools chartered their PTSA and it is working out wonderfully (they have 3000 students also)
Although fundraising is still a necessity, at the high school level, the focus has shifted to student involvement and volunteerism as well as integrating the parents into the day to day lives of their teenager's lives. Parental involvement is needed even in high school and college, although they may not be that quick to admit that they want it.
The high schoolers integrate their involvement also with their government classes and student government.
If you are going into it as a fundraiser, you have a lot of groups to compete with, sports, band, art clubs, every club. When that has been the focus of the parent group, it hasn't done well.
Our high school dose not have a PTO or a PTA. There is not parent organization except for individual booster clubs. We are in a county that is and will be in a major growing phase for the next few years. There are about 3000 kids in the whole school system. We have 3 elementary school and another being built all of which have active parent organizations. We have 1 middle school and one being built and a PTSO with very little parent involvemnet and may not exist next year due to lack of officers. The high school has about 900 kids and only booster clubs with minimum participation. We were a rural school that is becoming a suburb of Altanta GA. I am wondering what can a PTO do for a high school. I am not sure our goal should be fundraising unless we become an umbrella group for all the booster clubs at the school. A group of parents would like to see changes made to bring pride and spirit to the school (we only had one pep rally last year, there are no dances (homecoming was poorly attended). The school is in transition from a mostly tech oriented student body to college bound students. We have a new pricipal and he got us to do a academic booster club, which turned out to be honoring our honor roll stdents with a breakfast each grading period. Communication is lacking to parents, clubs are held once a month during school. As a group of parents we are very concerned about not only the academics at the school but the overall high school experience our children are getting. Need your advise as to what to do. Would like to talk to other High School PTO's and find out how you got started and what are your goals.
