I am all for the email route, but have found in our district there are many (very surprisingly so) people who do not use email. Think I will recommend to our board we test emailing information to people. Tell them not to reply just for notification.
It's all about e-mail! I have several units who do this (as do I). When they sign up for their memberships, require an e-mail address, then have one person who maintains that address book. So if the President isn't the person who does this, and the President wants the membership to know that the Chili Cookoff is on the 13th, they draft the e-mail, send it to the person with the database and it is forwarded on. Concerns are generally addressed rather quickly via e-mail. (I had four replies on one e-mail because I didn't correct that it was for a specific county and the responses- from the other county in my council, ranged from questions as to why they were excluded to "Red headed Step Child"- which has now become a funny joke- and they were addressed quickly-because of e-mail)
This covers the parents who can't pick up or if they do, don't have the time to run into the school. It can be far more detailed than a bulletin board and provides any hour access.
One of the units (formerly my own school) stated that for confidentiality laws, they needed the e-mail addresses from the member in order to legally keep them informed. It also cuts out the cost of paper.
And yes, if there is a problem, you can bet they'll show up to the meetings. My own school averages about 10 people per meeting but when we voted on what to do with fundraising surplus, 75 people showed up. If it matters to them, they'll be there.
Getting parents to participate is hard regardless the school size or even the socio-economical area.
Our school district does all our copying for free so we do 2 monthly publications to keep the entire school informed we also now have our newsletter posted monthly on the school website.
If copying costs are a concern to you have you considered going to the UPS Store (mailboxes) and buying a bulk copy card? 3,000 copies cost $90.00. We only send communications to oldest child in the school...
Bulletin Boards are a great start but as mentioned not many read them. We have one in the main lobby and decorate it so it is eye catching and people still don't see it. Even with all the communications we do parents still complain they don't know what is going on.
Any chance you would be willing to share your questionnaire? We are a large school (750+) and our PTO consists of 5 (yes, just 5) parents. I'm determined to increase our parent participation in the 04/05 school year. Any help would be very much appreciated.
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Hi! You should try adding a mailing list to your web site (if you haven't already). There are a bunch of free ones you can get. We are using the one by Topica. Just get people to join the mailing list or have them sign up for it at back to school night or whatever beginning of the year events you have. That way you can let people know what is going on or send out reminders with one email. We do a monthly newsletter that way as well as reminders.
ok let me try. When we sent out our survey last year we attached a raffle prize if they sent it back. We told them they could either fill out their names and would be entered into prize, or could still submit without the name. Most people submitted with name. We still got critized but they put it a little nicer since name was attached. Then----and here is the good part. We personally called the people with the critizism or suggestion and said "You are absolutely right, we could have done a lot better job on that, since you have sooooooo many wonderful ideas on how to do this, won't you pleassseee head just this ONE (event, fundraiser, enrichment program, etc.) next year to make sure it is done as successfully as you envision it?
The weird thing is, we actually got a lot of parents that way. Once they showed us "how we should have run this event/fundraiser, etc." they continued to stay involved and are actually great. In fact our next year PTA Pres was sucked in, using this technique! Good Luck!
