Our teachers would be lost without the room parents. Each class has a head room parent who is responsible for making sure the three parties happen, the class has somebody responsible for emergency calling, and helps the teacher with anything else they need.
At the start of each school year we send out a notice with every student asking parents if they are willing to be a room parent, with a form they can return. The notice also announces a room parent organizing meeting, usually held during the first full week of school in the cafeteria. At the organizing meeting the room parent chair reviews the responsibilites, and then they break up into groups by classroom. Each group then chooses a volunteer to be their head room parent. If a class has no head room parent, the chair starts calling folks to recruit one. In the typical class will have around half the parents volunteer, so getting somebody usually isn't a problem.
The head room parent will call an organizing meeting prior to each party to plan their activites.
They will also be given a list of emergency contact information for each student, or arrange to have it delivered to one of the other room parents. If something happens that requires early dismissal, (heavy storm, power failure, etc.) the school will contact the parents with the contact lists and have them contact the students' parents.
For other assistance in the classroom, the teachers usually start by sending a general notice home with all students. If it takes more effort than that, they call the head room parent.
our "room parents" job has been to run the 3 class parties (fall,v-day,spring),ask for donations of snacks & all. this year was the 1st year pto bought all the goodies for the parties-seemd to go over nicely-so the room parent basically just had to show up & plan some games. we are thinking of adding more duties since they wont be doing as much. using this as more of a class representative. agreeing w/ your post-we would like to give lists of duties to that person & let her find helpers. this would help us reach more people. plus break our jobs in little pieces which would allow more tasks to get done. the more people to help,the easier the jobs & the less scary pto looks. sounds like a winner to me! SuZan
we are hoping to add a new dimension to our pto by having room parents. they would not only act as a liason from the teacher to our pto but also help with calling the parents from their class to help with volunteering, finding needs the class might have for pto support, yearly pto sign ups, new parent welcome, etc. if you have any ideas on this or can tell me about your room parent duties i would love to hear from you. thanks for the input. [img]smile.gif[/img]
