Mom2Punkin I know where your coming from our pto board is all new also. We have a handful of volunteers ( parents ) that have stuck with us but for the most part everyone is burnt out or not interested. It's definetly time for some changes but I know that our principal and teaching staff will resist anything new. I have a meeting with the principal on tuesday and I plan on discussing with her some of the boards ideas for change and I couldn't be more nervous. Hope I can stand my ground and get somethings changed without ruining our relationship for the whole year. Anyways just wanted you to know your not alone. Hang in there.
Something I learned when I was a "career woman" which carries over to my "volunteer career" - if you continue to do what you are doing, you will continue to get what you get! Change is a hard thing to accept, but a necessary fact of life. Make sure that when you discuss changing anything that you bring up the positive energy that results from this change! This is my second term as PTO president and change for the better was our goal as a group for the last school year. We have had more parent participation recently because they see that this is not a "clique" or "mom's club" and that their opinions were very much taken into consideration. I can't wait to get this year rolling!
We have our meetings in our cafeteria so we simply set number on the stations and had the small groups (based on meeting attendance and I think we had about 35 that time so there were groups of 5). There was a board member that prior to had been told of their "topic" and they had a large butcher block so that as folks came through new ideas were spouted out (anything was fair game). The only thing we had to make sure was between rotations we had the sheets of ideas changed over so no one could get their ideas from the last group....kept it fresh. We used 10 minutes per station which was in keeping with out 1 hour timeline. We had the following topics
Fundrasiers (with examples of our food we were selling/holiday wrap etc)
Teacher appreciation
Quadrangle development
Carnival ideas
Book Club Concept
Wild Ideas/Free feedback was one I wanted and didn't quite get to.
Of course you use whatever topics fit. It went over very well and 10 minutes was enough for folks to not start goofing around. At the end the board member compiled all the ideas on a report to me and we had them in our kit bag for things to look at as we were planning.
dlf I love the idea of rotating stations how did you set yours up were they small group discussions, was there a board member just there to listen or were they written questioners?
First of all, remember that there is nothing wrong with change. You can also bring up the fact the new activities may increase parent/family involvement. Isn't that the end goal?
Hang in there. 
