Our PTO newsletter and our school one are also seperate. The PTO one is handled by one of us and has our upcoming events, fundraisers, how things went, etc.
The school one has what you are looking for teacher input. The Science Lab and what each grade level project are going on. The reading teacher, gym that king of thing.Then there is one page for each grade level and what they are working on. We have about 8 of each class from K-2. So that would be alot of teacher pages. Just one teacher handles the page and what the grades are doing. We only have about 2-3 per school year. The montly ones got to be too much time.


Good Luck

I recommend that you seek to educate the principal, teacher, and parents on the importance of parental involvement in education.

You may want to apply to Back to School 2008. Ths may help you get off to a great start next year.

The sooner they see the PTO as a necessity rather than a burden, the better.

If you google "parent involvement", you'll mostly come up with great resouces that are right in line with what you need in statistical data to prove your point. You may be able to add your state and get information specific to your state that will carry more credibility. Everyone wants to beleive information coming from inside their state is better or more relevant than the 49 other states.

Search the archives of PTO directly and you'll also find some great articles.

Thank you all for your input. In a perfect world all of your suggestions would work . . . however this year is far from perfect. We have a new principal, who means well but is very young and pulled in many directions . . We have a whopping 9 members (out of roughly 1,000 parents) this year who regularly participate in our school. Our school does not put out any type of newsletter and the school district's website is poorly updated. Our principal does not send out any type of "letter" and does not contribute to the newsletter we put out. Our newsletter is the only means of communication between the school and parents. . . it's sad to say, but very true. Also, our school does not allow for parent helpers in each class, everything is all about testing, so the party/extra recess or any other activities that would take away from study time incentives are no longer allowed . . .because of the Wellness program, Pizza/ice cream incentives are not allowed . . . due to our lack of parental involvement this year our resources are stretched beyound their means . . . ok . . .so I'm venting . . . we have tried so many different stratagies to get parents more excited about our school . . .and none have worked. I'm tired. And just for the record, our newsletter is distributed monthly and usually only runs two or three pages front and back. We include the month's school calendar, classroom news, community highlights and any student acheivements along with what's going on with the PTO. Alrighty . . .I'm done with my tantrum . . .thanks for listening . . .

I put out a newsletter each month to my parents. At first I was doing all the writing and the wonderful teachers here at PS 203k would always give me compliments and input...the parents also love the info they get....so I decided this school year I would include my very supportive teachers...So I post a notice Thanking them for their never ending support and tell them I would like to highlight their grade this month whatever they want to say or whomever they want to acknowlege is great...if they mention names they all have to (each grade has about 7 classes) it is so exciting to them and I get a great article written by them(they all colaborate) and when they see it in print they love it....My letter/request is colorful and with pictures and also very grateful...Try it I can send you mine if you like
and I love getting the PTO stuff its really great
J. Primo

Personally I like the idea of separate newsletters, one from the school and the other from the PTO.

My reason is that there is almost always so much valuable information that putting it all into one newsletter would likely make it a four or sixe page book, if not more.

I have found that most parents will not look at a sent home document that is more than 2 pages or so.

What I have worked out at my school is that the PTO sends home a monthly newsletter that is, for the most part, strictly PTO related. At the same time the school sends home their own newsletter that provides info on classroom events, school functions, such as the 4th grade chorus, etc.

The Principal has provided this role to the computer teacher, which just makes sense.

Besides this, a monthly newsletter is a large time devotion. I end up sepnding like twenty hours each month, and this is for just a 2 page PTO newsletter. Taking on more would be extremely difficult, especially if I had to beg for teacher feedback.

Best recommendation is to try to have the Principal buy into the idea of splitting the newsletters and get a staff member to take on the school one. The teacher would more easily obtain feedback from the other teachers, be able to take photos, etc.

Good luck,
PresidentJim

Maybe offer an incentive... I know it shouldn't come to this, but more and more when we offer some type of incentive, gift card, certificate, etc... we receive more responses. It could be where every teacher that gives input for 3 months straight receives a prize or any teacher that gives input goers into a drawing for a prize. I get the idea that the teachers are busy, but so are we as parents and we make the time to make the news letter and we do not get paid for this- I think sometimes it would be nice though. We have the same problem with teacher involvement at events and PTO meetings. Good luck to you!