we are hoping to add a new dimension to our pto by having room parents. they would not only act as a liason from the teacher to our pto but also help with calling the parents from their class to help with volunteering, finding needs the class might have for pto support, yearly pto sign ups, new parent welcome, etc. if you have any ideas on this or can tell me about your room parent duties i would love to hear from you. thanks for the input.

our "room parents" job has been to run the 3 class parties (fall,v-day,spring),ask for donations of snacks & all. this year was the 1st year pto bought all the goodies for the parties-seemd to go over nicely-so the room parent basically just had to show up & plan some games. we are thinking of adding more duties since they wont be doing as much. using this as more of a class representative. agreeing w/ your post-we would like to give lists of duties to that person & let her find helpers. this would help us reach more people. plus break our jobs in little pieces which would allow more tasks to get done. the more people to help,the easier the jobs & the less scary pto looks. sounds like a winner to me! SuZan

Our teachers would be lost without the room parents. Each class has a head room parent who is responsible for making sure the three parties happen, the class has somebody responsible for emergency calling, and helps the teacher with anything else they need.

At the start of each school year we send out a notice with every student asking parents if they are willing to be a room parent, with a form they can return. The notice also announces a room parent organizing meeting, usually held during the first full week of school in the cafeteria. At the organizing meeting the room parent chair reviews the responsibilites, and then they break up into groups by classroom. Each group then chooses a volunteer to be their head room parent. If a class has no head room parent, the chair starts calling folks to recruit one. In the typical class will have around half the parents volunteer, so getting somebody usually isn't a problem.

The head room parent will call an organizing meeting prior to each party to plan their activites.

They will also be given a list of emergency contact information for each student, or arrange to have it delivered to one of the other room parents. If something happens that requires early dismissal, (heavy storm, power failure, etc.) the school will contact the parents with the contact lists and have them contact the students' parents.

For other assistance in the classroom, the teachers usually start by sending a general notice home with all students. If it takes more effort than that, they call the head room parent.

The responses are great, but if this is the first year you are implimenting Room Parents, you might want to go a bit simpler. That way you can guage what works for you and what doesn't. Figure out (aka make a list...lol) of what it is that you think a room parent should do. Our school uses the 'Room Parent' as a contact person between the teachers and the other class parents, usually for parties and field trips, to ensure that we don't have 30 dozen cookies and no punch or plates... I try to use parents who are unable to come do stuff at the school because they have small children at home, work crazy hours or something like that. They do the work for the teachers. It was our first year this last year, and it seems to have worked out very well, getting parents to help who might not otherwise be able to. You can give the people who can show up another name, like Classroom Party Crews or something equally fun.

We have had room parents forever and I have some suggestions to head off a problem before it starts. When we send out the volunteer sign up sheet we also send out a seperate one for homeroom volunteers. It lists the opportunities for helping such as chaperoning field trips, helping with bulletin boards, baking for parties, helping out at parties, etc. And then we have a paragraph describing the homeroom parents duties, which can differ dramatically from grade to grade. We actually have 2 parents for each kindergarten and first grade class because there can be so much parent involvement. Because we have sign ups for helping just in the classroom we've generated an easy list for the homeroom parent to call from. What has happened in the past is that the hr parent would just call her friends over and over out of conveince, shyness or whatever or the same parent would be the hr parent for her child over and over. To solve the first problem we tell all the homeroom parents when we pick them (we do this by putting all the names in a hat and picking) that they need to call everyone at least once. And we made a rule that you cannot be a homeroom parent for each of your children more then once unless no one else volunteers. It's interesting how many parents are willing to help with just their childs class instead of on a committee doing something for the whole school. We couldn't do without these helpers!

do you make the room parents be "pto members" which i mean just that they have paid their $3 dues. weve had the rule that the lead room parent & any parents that come to the planning meeting have to be a member. we dont feel this is a big deal, like i said its the $3 dues and "saying" im pto member. we do this to try to promote pto & show community that the parties are supported by pto. we have had parents mad about this rule. they will not come to the planning meetings but show up on party day w/ their own goodies. weve even had a clique this year that ran down pto like crazy(one of those speaking up this week to say she wanted 2nd vp-im like "yeah right"). whats your take? should just lead room parents be "made" to be a member, should we leave alone & just recommend but not make? are your "lead" room parents actually board members? Thanks for input SuZan