Our PTO board is a mixture of full time working parents and stay at home parents. One of the ways we are going to try to connect with both working and stay at home parents this is with email. We will continue to send home the snail mail version that gets lost in the bottom of the bookbag. Most working parents read email daily if not hourly so why not utilize it to send home quick reminders...Remember white t--shirt for art class tomorrow. You might remember to stop and buy it on your way home vs going out at 9 when you finally went through the bookbag. We are also selling calendars with every activity on the calendar instead of sending it home monthly. (field trips, projects due, school closed, spirit day, box top, soup labels, primary lunches, early dismissal, etc) We are selling the calendars for $8 and making a $4.50 profit on it. All the parents working and non working say this great. Working parents will be buying 3-4 (one at home, one at each parents office and one at the sitters).

This year we are having room parents who will work with both the teacher and the PTO (room parent can't be on the PTO board). During open house, we are allotting 15 minutes for all the parents to go around and see our different committees and we are having a list for each committee and what can be done from home (cut soup labels, address envelopes for mailings, etc) and what needs to be done at the school (copies for teachers, bulletin boards, etc). This way working parents who feel they can't help will find a way to help. For ex. one mother volunteered to cut soup labels, box tops. She said she sits a little league practice for 30 minutes and feels she is wasting precious time. No reason to go home can't run errands so she said this way she feels she is volunteering for 30 mins 2 times a week.

hope this helps

I am a single mother who works full time and am a student as well, add to that my first year as PTO president. Our school doesn't have much support but I hope to gain more over the next year. I don't think that parents don't want to be involved but we have to be more flexiable and creative with what we do during the school year. Good Luck to everyone...I'm off to meet with the school principal.

We have 2 full time. Actually 1 1/2. I am Pres, but unable to be at school that often. My other person is there all the time. We had enrollment yesterday and we got a lot of names, just hope they can do even the smallest thing when it comes time.

Hi, brand new to this site - don't know how I did't find it before - been on PTO for 3 years - Secretary - work full time, and sit on another Board for a non-profit as officer too. I agree volunteerism is at a low and the same people seem to step up to the plate over and over. What we did this year at our school, which helped, is at Open House for the school year, we spoke, had a booth/table for sign ups and I immediately called people back who signed up just to say hello and when they would like me to call, etc. I'd be happy to share my little forms with anyone. It certainly brought in more help, or at least phone numbers to call in emergency situations [img]smile.gif[/img]

I'm the Pres and the only Board member that is a stay-at-home mom. The rest of the board works full time. I have 2 committee chairs that are stay at home and thats it. Everyone works. (I commend you all as I dont know how you fit everyting in!) I try to designate 1 day a week as PTO day. I email just about everyday but one day I get all the other stuff done. I could worry about PTO stuff 24/7, with this I tell myself not to worry about it till Thursday, thats my PTO day. It helps when I get overwhelmed.

keep the replys coming, we have a ton of working parents who put in as much as they can and I can rely on them alot! We tend to do alot of setting up for our night events starting at 2;30 and I am seeing less and less help this year. I work part time and struggle with fitting everything in and was just wondering about this because I just found out this week that the two parents training under me to become co-presidents in February both just got jobs!Both of these were people who would help set up. I was surprised by both and now wondering where it will leave our day time events and set up....I was hoping that I could lay back a little and concentrate on volunteers, and some other programs for our school. just wondering about all of you...