If any of you have a dads group at your school or have ideas on how to get dads more involved both in the education of our children and in the PTO activities, can you please post them? We have a traditional PTO structure and have never had any significant involvement by men. We would like to change this but don't know where to start. Thanks

Hey Wendy -

Check out our Jan02 cover story on "The Father Factor". It's at: http://www.ptotoday.com/1201dads.html

Lots of good ideas in there.

Good luck,

Tim

We are going to start having a once a month "Donuts with Dads". It will be held on the say the first Friday of every month before school . This way even working dads can just go in late once a month, bring their kids for breakfast and we will have a PTO member there talking about upcoming events and how they can help. There seems to be a lot of interest, I think the dads just don't know how to help.

This may sound shallow, but I have found that getting the Dads to the meetings was really the first place to begin, just like with everyone else. I accomplished that by 1)asking the Dads to attend 2)putting out the word that I needed some 'muscle' to put shelves together (what man can resist?) and finally, by getting and advertising door prizes that appealed to men (oil and lubes, tools, hardware store gift certificates, etc.). Turns out that men work best as childcare supervisors because they literally run the children until they drop, meaning that bedtime is right after the meetinings! It may be shallow, but it worked for us!

We are working on two programs that will be targeted specifically for dads next year. A committee of dads that will work as "security" at our programs (no, we don't have any known trouble-makers and we are just an elementary). Mainly for when we are holding outdoor events like the Fall Festival or dances that go into the night hours --to make sure unwelcome guests don't show up and for general safety. Also to use during book fair or when large sums of money is being collected. In the past there have been times when we were asked by the school to pay for a security guard, so this way the security is free and it gives the dads something to do that they feel comfortable with. One more committee is the Chair Committee. This is for all the setting up needed before our programs--we have a cafetorium and the tables must be moved out and chairs all lined up for audience. Again, a perfect plan for the males of our school.

2 out of 4 executives on our PTO are dads, as well as a few committee chairmen. I have been involved for 5 years and we get plenty of dads helping at cleanup days, fair set up etc. I can understand not getting many at the meetings because for both the husband and wife to attend, a babysitter may be needed. Many months, we have 2 or 3 dads attend the meetings.