Our school is hosting a Breakfast w/Santa for the first time this year. We are a PTO that provides all bussing for field trips and pays for admission for almost every field trip the students take.(k-5) We fund all holiday parties, handle school pix, yearbook, fund a scholarship. We also give every teacher a $25.00 enrichment certificate that they use toward classroom supplies. With all this, we have decided not to make Santa Breakfast a fundraiser. We are giving every student free admission. (Parents & sib.'s must pay $1.00) My question is, how do you suggest we get the teachers to volunteer to help run the Breakfast? We have made announcements, issued bulletins and had VERY little response? I feel like, for all we do, they should help us out with this one event. It is only for two hours on a Saturday.

Breakfast with Santa is one of our most popular events. Like yours, it's held on a Saturday morning and isn't a fundraiser. We budget $500 for expenses, and it usually just breaks even. There's no charge for anyone to attend. Crafts and Christmas karaoke are free, but pictures with Santa are $1.50 and donut with juice is $1 (both optional).

We run this ourselves with parent volunteers. For this particular event, we generally have more volunteers than we can use - it's very popular and the parents have to be there anyway with their children. A few teachers (who are also parents) help, but we've never really solicted the teachers to run it. Our teachers spend so many extra hours at the school, we don't see the need.

I guess I'm curious why you want the teachers there. Don't you have enough parents?

We don't do a breakfast with Santa but we do a cookie's and milk with Santa. During this time we we also have the grand opening of our Holiday Shoppe. There is no cost for cookies and milk with Santa but we end up seeing around $2000.00 on the Holiday Shoppe. We charge 1.50 for pictures with Santa and this year we have added 2 things on. One being Hotdogs so you can eat dinner. We are selling these for $1.00. The actual cost to us is .30. We are also having a raffle for Christmas Bears and animated figure. We sent each student home with 6 tickets. We have allready made our expenses back on the raffle alone. It takes alot of work. You have to beat the bushes and find the best deals. As for teachers we don't have alot of them involved so we have to depend on parents. We have also found that offering one of the Sr. high classes something will get them out to help too.

Our PTO is going to have a holiday gathering also. We are having it on a Tuesday evening...We have found most parents won't do any weekend morning activities so close to x-mas. Because our PTO has had a very profitable year so far we decided to teach the children a small lesson in compassion. For every child who brings in a toy for Toys for Tots, Mittens for our Mitten Tree, or a canned food item they will get a picture with Santa at no charge. We are also having cookie decorating and a small craft. Santa will be reading to the kids also.

In resposne to JHB, we would like to use the teachers at this event because our school is a low income school with very little parental involvement. OUr PTO board members are pretty much the only volunteers at all our events. This being a Santa Breakfast, many of our BOD members have young children and would like to enjoy this event with them. We are expecting around 200 children and 8 of us is not enough to handle this. I truly feel like 2 hours on a Saturday is not an extreme amount to ask... We don't ask them to volunteer at anything els all year long. Granted, teachers put in a lot of extra time at their jobs, but so do we as parents and taxpayers. It's called good public relations. I believe the teachers agree with you and do not feel the need to do more, because we have only 3 volunteers out of 40. Sad.