We just started a facebook site for our school. There are 3 of us that are the admistrators who have the ability to control what goes on. It was slow to start but we have 28 parents and teachers onboard. We think it is a great way to have another tool to communicate to parents about what is going on at school. We can post minutes from meetings and updates on things that are coming up or introductions on who we are
We have a facebook page, and we disabled the ability for anyone but admin to add pictures. The reason behind it is for internet safety for our kids. When I addressed the issue with our district, that was their only concern. We are the PTO, not the school, so as a separate entity it was not an issue.
We are up to 85 members, and we post meeting dates/times, upcoming events, etc....but not school information
We had a FaceBook page and a Twitter page that were working great, until 1 parent (who is ALL the time causing trouble somewhere!) posted some inappropriate comments. after I blocked him for these, he showed his butt, and I was "asked" by the principal to discontinue both pages. Part of his reasoning for this was that our district has yet to develope protocol for these types of sites.
To avoid any possible problems, I would recommend that you check with your local school distict first, and then go from there. Also, I would recommend placing a disclaimer on your page.
We are going to try and go paperless this year. With our schools budget cuts, I have to provide the paper to send flier home with all the student. For our first meeting, it was 3 pages per student. Parent letter, membership form and ballot/volunteer form. We have 500 so it was 1500 pages copied!!! I thought, this is gonna get expensive. So we are going to use email and FB to all our exchange. I am looking forward to it. No more copies!!!
