I heard a great speaker one time complaining about how misguidedly people use "number of attendees" as a success factor. In and of itself, the number of people who happen to attend a meeting is meaningless. It's what they gained, how they got involved, what interaction took place that mattered.

He suggested that if we were going to use meaningless numbers as statistics we should at least make them interesting. His specific suggestion was that we estimate the average weight of the people in our crowd, multiply it by number of people, and report "Tonnage Present”. It would still be a questionable statistic, but at least it would be an attention-getter!

Yes, of course if we go to the trouble of setting up a meeting, we'd like a nice crowd. But we do need to keep it all in perspective and remember that our success is tied to a lot more than simply the number of people who attend any given meeting.

Great subject. Thanks for all the input.

Here's an interesting article I found today that touches on this:

www.jsonline.com/news/state/sep03/169849.asp

To CBrooks -- If "cliquism" was the impression of my post, then I didn't explain it right. Apologies. Let me try better:

I think openness and welcoming should be the most prominent words for any PTO. It's not that we don't want people to come to our meetings. Instead it's two things:

1. A realization that high meeting attendance is not the best measure of success (high involvement overall is); and

2. Even given #1, the best way to slowly develop more core leaders (and thus more meeting attendance) is by putting on great events that draw in and welcome new parents and reluctant parents.

Are more parents likely to come out for a meeting or a free spaghetti supper night? If you can get 75 parents to your supper night, you've got a great chance to connect personally with lots of them and a really good chance to find 4 or 7 new parents who might be willing to get involved with your group.

For me, it's not at all about wanting only the same inner core to run everything. It's much more about the best way to bring in more folks. Any day of the week, I'd take zero meeting attendance and successful family events over moderate meeting attendance and no or unsuccessful events.

That's the whole concept behind our School Family Nights ( www.schoolfamilynights.com ) program.

Tim

[ 09-15-2003, 11:53 AM: Message edited by: Rockne ]

If you look through similar posts you'll probably find me responding with my same comments. It's nice to have a large attendance at meetings and get all kinds of input, but unfortunately, in today's busy world many people just don't have the time or don't want to make the time to attend another meeting. Some are perfectly happy to just let their elected board and the committees make the decisions on programs and fundraising and some just plain don't care. I used to sweat and worry over meeting attendance and then one day, I realized that the most important thing was that we had the volunteers to help at the events, support our fundraisers, and most important of all-be in the classrooms helping the children and supporting the teachers. If someone only has an hour of time to give, I would much rather see them spend it directly helping the students.

As for looking like a clique: that's not based on how many people attend your meetings, but how welcome you make someone feel when they do come.

We are starting on our third year since the school's been in existence. Our first president had never been to a parent meeting before. Our first chairs for room reps had one kindergartener and 3 preschooler between them, but really wanted to be a part of it. We had 8 new chairpeople after the first year. This year there's an additional 14 new chairpeople this year, that are totally new to the district. We only lost 6 due to moving or jr. high in the first two years of existence. We (the entire board with the 11 new chairs) busted our butts to get those budget numbers ready for the beginning of the year. So that we could work on new goals and objectives to accomplish as a group.

My oldest is a third grader. Do the math? I moved into town and became a volunteer. The new school opened and I jumped into a chairmanship. Next year I moved to the exec. board as VP and now I'm the pres. Our school district had a 12% growth this year. I convinced two energenic, hadn't unpacked there boxes, parents to head up one of our committees after that first meeting.

We usually have 20 people at our meetings and we let the chairs handle their committees and the board is there if they need us. I'm not saying not to let people come, I'm saying it's okay they'll be there for the kids in so many ways that one kind of get together is not the only way to tap into all these wonderful people out there.

We also try to help the new folks with back up from the past years and education like the PTOToday show. The risk of having all these new folks seems to be so outweighed by the infusion of creativity from new people. I personally felt so welcomed from this district. It has opened up three other schools since us and we are networking to help the new groups. All of these are not our exec board's ideas, we asked the total school parent population what they wanted from the group and that's the feedback we got back.

Please try not to fall back on the stereotype that PTOs are clique's. I have to ask you "How's it working for you?" At the PTO Today show one of the seminars talked about just what I said: attend an event then, offer to volunteer then, step up and become a chair then, maybe become an officer and the numbers get smaller as you move along that path. I'm just saying I believe it works.

Throw out the frustrations, the ultimate goal is to provide a totally extraordinary, educational, experience for the kids. If attendance is low at the meetings; try another approach.

Our principal said he loved that the meeting was short last time because then he really got to talk one on one with the people afterwards and get to know them. We have teachers reps and a different teacher is assigned to each meeting, but the parents don't really talk with their teachers at our meetings. The reps are there to pass info onto the staff. Sorry I got wordy but, do you find anything about us cliquey?

Help me are there more out there that use this approach.

[ 09-14-2003, 07:51 PM: Message edited by: tradechi ]

Why have general meetings if you don't care if anyone comes? Why not just let the clique oops, I mean board members handle everything then? Just curious.

I also agree that major turn outs to meetings is a fallasy. Are you asking people to meetings and then boring them with stuff that they don't even have time to absorb because they don't know how things are run. You can't explain it ever time or then you'll lose the people that already have showed up consistantly. Invite them to something fun, start them out small. Have them go to a committee meeting first where maybe just one event is being planned. After a good volunteer, maybe you'll get a good chair and then maybe a good officer. You don't want 30 officers you'll never come to a consensus. I'm looking forward to Tim's article.

Let me toot my own horn. Our first meeting of the year usually has the most people, because they want to find out what is going on. We had about 30 people there, passed the budget, voted to become NPN members, committees reported on their progress, shared some great new ideas and I adjourned 1 hr and 5 mins later. I got a round of applause for that one. We'll get 200 at our first Family Fun Night, and that's what I like to see.