My PTO Board is discussing the same insurance requirements (adults over 18, CPR and/or first aid training). Have you resolved your issue? I was wondering if the adults requirement is moot if the babysitters are simply in the room next door?
We have several parents, mostly mom's, with difficulty finding sitters for these occassions. My 11 year old daughter is great with kids, and she and a couple of her friends accompany me to the meetings. We tell all our members, and anyone else who would like to attend, that we have free childcare available for any meeting or function. Then the kids play, draw or color nearby and parent's can devote their full attention to the task at hand. Also, the playground is just around the corner, if the weather permits.
We have childcare at our meetings, it is absolutely a necessity. One of our teachers is always nice enough to let us use her room. The kids color, watch videos and have snacks. We start at 6:30 and are always done between 7:30 and 8:00.
All folks who step into the childcare shoes must be a teacher or fingerprinted. To register and get fingerprinted you must go down to the police department and it costs about $45.00. Mostly, We use the aides from our local Department of Parks and recreation who run the after school program and are already set up.
It's worked out really well.
We have a couple of high school girls who babysit each month at our meetings. We pay them each $15. They keep the kids in the foyer of our school, right near the cafeteria and our meeting. Sometimes, they show an approved video, sometimes they bring a guitar and sing songs, or play games. If the weather is nice, they may take the kids out to play on the playground. It has worked out great and has made it much easier for some parents to attend, esp. dads who otherwise would be home with the kids. We generally have between 3-10 children.
Our school houses both an elementary school and a middle school. Our middle school Beta Club uses the babysitting once at month at PTO meetings as community service projects. The PTO purchased some games, coloring books and a few quiet toys and the middle school student takes the kids over in to a corner of the cafteria while we meet...it's close enough to the parents that we can make sure the kids don't over power their babysitter but far enough away that we can stay focused on the meeting.
We provide babysitting for the orientations to encourage parents to attend. They can sometimes be huge ordeals; but we get volunteer parents from other grades (not having orientation) and then they can use the service when they have orientation. Our parent orientations are also usually only about 1 hour long so we can coral the energy for that long using videos, coloring tables and some simple games. We tend to not have babies as they go with the parents and we work to keep the itty bitties in their own areas supervised by adults more numerically and by 5th grade volunteers (they love the babysitting feel). Then we get donated ice cream cards from brusters to "pay" the 5th graders and it all works very nicely. We get constant comments from our parents on what a tremendous service it is for folks that cannot find/afford sitters (we live in a rural area), and really allows some of our lower income parents the chance to attend these important information nights.
We have found though that the coop concept with some modification is the way to go. It is a bit more effort in the organization of it all but we get more support by using that method.
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ps--we are covered by the schools insurance for this particular event.
