Hi,
Last Tuesday we held our first Doughnuts for Room Parents. Almost every class was represented. I designed an invitation and sent them home to the parents whose teacher had provided a name to us. They were delighted. We discussed what most of the teachers wanted from their Room Parents. We also talked about what the PTO was doing and how the Room Parents can help, such as getting the parents in their classes to volunteer a time to operate the festival games and help with our BINGO. We have had a wonderful start to this year. Already we have more than 130 members, most of these signing up from the open houses and more joining daily, we've been in school only 3 1/2 weeks. Last year we had 102 all year to sign up. We sent out a survey and a volunteer sheet and have had a tremendous response. We just participated in our towns annual festival. This is the second year doing this, last year we only cleared $35.00. This year I wrote and sent a flyer home asking for baked goods to sale. We were shocked as to how much was sent in. We managed to raise a profit of $180.00. It would have been a better turn out, but we had thunderstorms off and on that day keeping several home. We mainly use the towns festival as a "The PTO is alive, well and working" type thing. Letting parents see us and get to know their officers. We have sold over 150 calendars, these we make ourselves. We approached parents about the calendars that I saw on another string here, but they liked the ones we do better, ours are reasonably priced, only $3.00 each, and are personalized for our school more so than if a company did them. We have more parents than ever already wanting to be active in the school. They are just waiting for the teachers to give the OK. The teachers like to have a few weeks without parents so that the children may get settled in to the new routine. We also have a wonderful supportive Principal. At the first faculty meeting she informed the teachers that she would like to see them not only join the PTO, but be at the meetings. As this was pTo and not just PO. We had 29 total parents and teachers at our first meeting. Last year if the children were not performing we had 8 attending, very seldom were any of those teachers. The success of this year would not have been as great without this site. I have gotten so many ideas and response's from people on here. Thank You!!!
Donna