I guess I was lucky in that my school had an annual family fun night (carnival) that was just for our school. It took at least 100 volunteers to pull off (each shift was in 1/2 hr. increments) & we had half of our teachers volunteer. We would post sign up sheets in the teacher lounge for this. A few would come to the pto meetings. But we usually would find occasional 'Thank You' notes in our pto box from the teachers & their classes. Due to budget cuts my school closed this yr. & I've joined another pto. Culture shock!!!!! I miss my old one.

This is my 5th year involved with the PTO and my first year being PTO president. We have 20 classroom teachers (K-5) and for the past 5 years none of them ever came to a meeting, however the principle has to attend all of them. This year for the first meeting I put an invitation in each of the teachers mailboxes inviting them to the meeting. One teacher came! We were so excited! So we decided to ask that one teacher from each grade attend the next meeting (the principle was suppose to ask them)to receive their grant money. They get $7000, plus we give them $2000 for incentives/prizes, plus the PE, Art and Music gets $3000. That's a lot of money! The only one that showed up was the librarian who was there to accept the money. That was really disappointing, I am guessing that the principle just asked for a volunteer to come for it. It is pretty sad when there are some teachers that have kids at the school and many that live nearby. I guess we should be happy with the one turnout at each meeting so far! We do have many that volunteer at various functions at the school.

Our school has always been very supportive of the teachers. At the beginning of the year the PTO has always asked the teachers for their wish list. In the last 7/8 years our PTO has purchased 2 copiers, laminator, ice machine for teachers lounge, snowblower for janitors, $40,000+ in computers for their classrooms, $13,000 to start a computer lab, popcorn machine and $40,000 for playground equipment. This year they would like a AccuCut System which the PTO voted $2500 towards and would like TVs in every classroom which will run around $7,000, and some would like it with cable. Everything we have spent money for with the exception of playground equipment and computer lab has been to help the teachers. They wanted volunteers to help xerox their papers, so only a few stay after 4:10 the rest leave the school right with the children or soon after. This year the principal wanted the room parents to get drivers for field trips to help relieve the teachers, again the PTO has try to see this task through. Our teachers don't volunteer at our carnivals or any other event we have. We don't see but 1 or 2 teachers at any of our events. We have had to cancel the last two carnivals for lack of volunteers. Teachers do not come to our PTO meetings. In fact in the past we haven't had many teachers purchase from our fundraisers to support the cause. We have in the past given them $65 dollar grants, with no strings attached. For Spirit Week we ask the classrooms to decorate doors and pass out flyers once a month, some do and some don't. This year we have asked them to help with the carnival (hoping that we have one), since the games will be in their rooms, and come to 1 PTO meeting, and the teachers are mad. Any suggestions?

We have 1 teacher that comes to every PTO meeting. We give our teachers $100.00 a yaer for class room supplies and we also have Market Day mini grants. With our mini grants each month a diffrent grade level gets $300.00 of our Market Day money. We were hoping with the mini grants more teachers would perticipate in some of our events and attend some meetings, but no luck with that!

I'm involved with two different elementary schools in the same district, and have two different experiences. Bottom line is that it all seems to flow down from the principal. The district actually has a regulation that stipulates that principals can mandate that teachers attend a certain number of PTA sponsored activities.

At one school, the teachers attend bingos and buy from fundraisers, and actively promote PTA membership--each teacher even makes a "join the PTA" pitch at the back to school night meetings, and this year also made a point of thanking the parents for buying them certain classroom equipment as a result of a one-time very successful auction last year.

At the other school, the teachers generally don't attend many (or, in most cases, any) events, although there are several teacher reps that attend the PTA meetings. Teacher involvement is generally pretty much limited to making sure that kids bring home flyers for stuff we do, and getting it back to the office.

I've made an interesting observation between the two schools, though. While I think the PTA officers feel better about the relationship between the teachers and the PTA in the first school, the bottom line doesn't seem to be any different between the two schools--they both have similar percentages of PTA membership, reasonably similar average sales/student for the catalog fundraiser, similar attendance at PTA events (actually, I think it's a little higher in the second school).

AT our school there is no stipulation to recieve
grant money. More than a few of our teaching staff are at the school way into the evening to
be prepared for the next day. A lot of the time
teachers give support by supporting our events by talking them up to the kids, participating in spirit week etc... These type of things take away from their busy days. I have found if you try and
do things that enhance their curriculum they may be more inclined to be involved. this month one of our teachers is hosting a family fun reading night. she has rallied up some of the other teachers to participate. don't get discouraged if they don't attend pto meetings, look at the little stuff they do to be supportive