Hi avonmom. My last group tried the Parent Rep thing and I'm sorry to say it didn't work out for us. We had one rep for each class. Their role was to be the liason between the parents in their class and the PTO. They were required to attend at least one meeting a year. There were no gains to this program but plenty of problems:

1. The Parent Reps were folks already involved. I was one the same year I was room mom and Teacher Appreciation chairman. Almost all other reps were officially something else too.

2. The one meeting a year requirement was all we got from each one.

3. The issues that parents brought up and were then brought to the meetings were 90% of the time an issue that should be directed elsewhere. They were really for the BOE, Admin, or Parent Teacher Advisory Committee, issues such as discipline, curriculum, bussing, hot lunch program. It wasted a lot of meeting time and started turning away folks who came to participate in PTO stuff.

We gave it a two year try and it just wasn't working for us. I hope you hear from folks who run a successful Parent Rep program so you have both sides of the coin before deciding.

Hello. I'm in my 2nd and final term as PTO Co-President. I'm trying to come up with a new way to get more parents involved and attend our meetings. I was thinking of having sign up sheets at our upcoming Open House for "Parent Representatives" for each grade level. Every year we ask for $1 to join PTO and become a member and we usually get about half of the parents to send in their membership form and money but we never see them at our meetings. All of our Officer positions are filled of course, so I thought if parents signed up and had a "title", that maybe they would feel more involved that way and join us for meetings. Am I making sense? I hope so! I would like to know from other groups, what are the duties of your Parent Representatives? Thanks for your help...
Cindy