How about opening to the school and "invited guests". Allows you to retain control of who can attend. I agree--the whole community might not fly at my school due to security, but opening to grandparents, school board, town officials and supporters may be a great compromise and "by invitations" makes it seem a bit special...
d

We have an Italian Dinner Night at my school where we bring in Carrabba's Italian Restaurant and Grill and they prepare the meals on site at the school. We do this twice a year and the first time this year, we only opened up to families at our school. We have now decided that we will be opening ours up to the community when we do it again in the spring. Granted, our school is on a military base so the dangers of opening it to the community is not as great here.

due to security reasons, we only had our school attend our events. If they brought another child as a guest, that was OK, but we would not open up the school to the public.

Our school the last couple of years have been doing the elf shopps. well with the currant situations going on in china with the lead we have decided to not do the shop this year. So I have a wonderful idea about a christmas snowball dance this is for a school of 2nd to 5th gradwes but I would like to invite the whole community. I would like to hear from anyone who has tried this and to get some ideas from their event. thank you very much sheryl crater v.p.