Our school of 400 elementary students have recently formed a team of 40-50 4th and 5th graders who will contribute to a monthly school newspaper. Does anyone have organizational tips? Our school has never had a newspaper and we have only met with the students a few times and realize we are in over our heads. We will be selling glow sticks at our dance to raise profits for paper and products needed and we are thinking of t-shirts. Do schools normally charge for their newspapers? Please, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Only our middle school and high schools have newspapers. In those cases they have a journalism class that publishes it and it's printed on real newspaper type stock (although smaller size). The cost is covered, or at least defrayed, by advertising - which the students sell to area businesses.

In each case, these are published monthly and free to everyone on campus. In the high school, parents can subscribe to a copy that is mailed home for $15.

I'd have a hard time imagnining charging for an elementary newspaper. I'd also suggest that monthly might be a bit ambitious. Maybe you can do 1 or 2 per semester.

Hey PTO VP--you can take a look at ours at brentpto.com under the newsletter tab. We did have a "little prints" insert that the children worked one time. It was a fun piece filled with kid like information (interviews with the principal, sports facts, a word jumble) things like that. It took them a bit of time however so once a month may be a bit to manage. We do our larger publication once a month and collect donations to support which you'll see on the back of the paper. Good luck and hope this helps...d

Thanks for all the great advice. I agree about not charging especially since this paper is being written by kids for kids. I'll pass on the advice about maybe trying less frequently. The kids do meet once a week for 1/2 to hour before school. Thanks again for the tips, feel free to keep them coming !

And maybe a newsletter would be a better way to go versus trying to publish a newspaper. A lot of us had those in elementary school, although ours didn't have information written by the kids.

But if you can format it simply where you are merely photocopying rather than having it professionally printed like a newspaper, that might helps save time and costs.