Childcare! Many parents will use the excuse that they don't have anyone to watch their child while they attend the meeting. Wipe that one out by offering child care in ANOTHER room of the school. If there is a TV/VCR bring a G-rated movie, coloring books, and other age appropriate activities. You can call upon the high school honor society students to provide this service, or if your budget allows pay someone $20.00 per meeting. Then advertise that childcare is available.
I think it was ScoobyDo or maybe Critter who had a sheet they sent home with the top 10 excuses for not attending a meeting - and their answers to each of them. I'm sure if they see this post they'll add it in here - it was great but I've lost mine somewhere along the way.
C. Brooks does your school not have a music teacher? I guess I just assumed that all K-5 schools had itinerants (art, music, PE) teachers. Anyway, our music teacher usually has a performance using kids form all the grades so we get a good cross-section of our parents at the meetings.
When I first took over our PTO school had already been in session for 3 months and attendance was getting bad. I wrote a statement of sorts explaining the function of the PTO.I felt that our one of our problems was that the teachers wasn't encouraging the parents enough. So I did what you did. At first the class with the most parents attending got a free lunch on the PTO (this was just for teachers and aides,it was a bad idea) So ultimately I came up with supply baskets. The class with the most parents win the baskets, along with our traditional banners. I divided it up so that k-2 could receive this and 3-5 could get one too because the older grades would have no parents attending and were getting very discouraged. This worked well, my point for this was: As a parent I get tired of getting notes sent home saying the class needed glue, tissue, baby wipes, etc., the teachers get tired of sending notes home for glue, tissue, etc. and the kids don't want to run out of glue, tissue, etc. So I felt that every one wins. Also before I took over there were no refreshments or door prizes. It's amazing what people will come for if it is free.
Another way to improve attendance is to have the kids perform. I could only get one teacher to do this but the room was packed and some of the parents had some interesting things to say.
Make sure that parents are kept informed of what's going on. If a parent hasn't a clue of what they are dealing with they will not want to attend a meeting.
Do like our school does - Hold their kids hostage!
Seriously, we have a student performance after every PTA Open Meeting. This year we are adding family time before each meeting. For tomorrow's meeting we will be serving a hot dog dinner(provided by the teachers with all funds raised going straight to the teachers for their classroom use). The book fair will be open the entire night before, during(?) and after the meeting and we will be having a zany hat parade at the start of the meeting and have the parents vote on the hats. The winner gets a neon colored Cat-In-The-Hat type hat.
I just came from our first general meeting. What a disappointment.Only 7 parents plus the PTO board attended. We have approx. 350 children in our school, we gave our parents a challenge (the class with the most parents attending get a class party paid for by the PTO)to bring up attendance at the meeting. We have also given the same challenge for membership in the PTO. Most of our parents thing is "PTO means volunteering time". We have said if you have time volunteer do so, if not that's okay too. Any ideas on what we can do to get more parents involved???
