In our school, head room parents call into the school head room parent to ask to be for the position in their child's class. This works okay but if you are new to the school and want to be in charge you don't know the process. However, the head room parents' (usaually no morew than 3) are seen as facilitors. They organize planning meetings for the 3 class parties. Any other parent can sign up to participate in class parties. Our school allows no more than 5 parents at any one party to avoid too many bodies in a room. The head room parents divide themselves and the other parents up as to convience of schedule (i.e. who's available when.) This may mean that each parent including the head room parents only get one party. It depends on the number of volunteers for each class. We still have control isuues but most parents feel they get to participate a little in their child's class.
I have up to 7 room parents sighned up fo a class and I feal that that will be to many but this is kindergarden but we have dicussed in great detail with the teachers and parents of these classes the parents are going to be separated in to two groups one will be reasponsible for treats and the other games I feal that I do not want to x out any willing parent wanting to volenteer the getting more parents involved is the goal of the PTO at least it is at our school. I hope that is the goal for everyone. How can we ask parents to volenteer and then x them out that is why the PTO and PTA get a bad name and have a hard time getting more parents involved. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. thanks
We have at least two, sometimes three room mothers per class. We send out a volunteer sign-up sheet in May for the following year. I made note of who sent theirs in first but it worked out well because for most classes we had at least two and sometimes three volunteers. We have one "contact person" per grade so that if we're trying to get info out quick, we can call one person from that grade who contacts other room mothers. I still occasionally hear a little belly-aching about how they're chosen, yada yada but this year not one person was left out who volunteered.
We prepare a detailed folder that we pass out in August at room mother meetings. I have posted the contents of that on this forum somewhere back in August of 2004.
Shelly
I have always found it incredibly funny how contentious this whole 'class parent' thing can become. I work full time so I being a class mom is not an option for me, which is just as well. I have absolutely no desire to be class mom. Every elementary school in our district (6 total) have the same sort of issues. Parents get themselves irate if they are not chosed. One woman last year even threatened a law suit--if you can believe it.
Anyway, we are having our kick off meeting tonight and the board has decided to pick the class moms there, in front of the whole group (maybe we will get a larger turnout because of tit). I guarantee you that it will not run smoothly.
At our school we have 2 classmoms for every class. The 1st is picked by our PTA and the other is pulled from a hat.
No matter which way you pick there will always be someone who complains. This has been a very sore subject in our school for as long as I can remember!
At my school I send home a letter for anyone who wants to be a homeroom parent. They have three options to choose from, they may sign up to be the rooms chairperson, a helper or a donate only parent. If we have more than one mom sign up to be chairperson we simply put all the names in a hat and pick one. That seems to be the fairest way of doing it. And as far as what mom gets what party, some can only do certain ones and the others we do the hat trick again. This has worked well in the past years and we plan on doing it the same way in the future. Trust me though no matter how fair we may think it is someone is bound to disagree. Even as adults we seem to always want to do one better than the person before us. Oh well such is life huh? Good luck!
