Our school last night had the most amazing thing for the students and parents. The alumni Sabres hockey team played our teachers/staff in a basketball game. (Sabres Hockey is huge here in Buffalo) It was a huge hit with kids and parents. Tons of kids were their with parents. It was $5.00 a ticket and it was alot of fun. Signed hockey memorbillia for auction, pizza, pop, signing of autographs.

Your right though you have to find your niche with the kids, it not the parents deciding what and where to go to anymore. If the kids arent interested the parents will never even see the flyer becasue the kids won't give it to mom or dad.

Cindy

JHB hit the nail on the head! Our K-12 charter school has the same issue but they do offer three big field trips for 6th thru 8th grade for the students and parents. The 6th grade go on a three or four day camping trip for Outdoor Education (I am personally not a "happy camping" so not for me but I did help raise the funds needed to go); in 7th grade my daughter went to International Towne and I belive they ran a country for a day. Not sure about that one but we were not able to bring sibblings SO ... And in 8th Grade a group of students worked all year to go to Washington DC for a week. There again, I helped with fundraisers but our family didn't go.

Now, this is my oldest of five so I am sure my volunteering will change as my younger ones (4th grade, 3rd grade, Kindergarten, and preschool) will progress through school but I know I liked helping with the fundraisers and which teachers need the most help.

Also if I can give the volunteer builder a plug here, that program has be awesome in helping us remember the moms like me with kids in two or three different schools and what our best talents are! OR remember who the mom was that loved to go on field trips and has the time!

I look at it a K-5 is on the job training for middle and high school! BUt the time my 4 year old is a Senior, I'll have a Drs degree! HA!

Don't give up, but be prepared to revise your idea of what the PTO should be and what it should do. What I'm seeing at both middle school and high school is that our parent groups try to handle teacher appreciation, general volunteer recruitment (like for first day of school registration) and then some very specific projects (like 8th grade prom, a small scholarship program in H.S.).

Parent communication is definitely an area I wish the groups would help with. Like someone else mentioned, communication via the kids is slim at best. Thank heavens for my high school PTA listserv - that's the only way I ever hear about certain things.

By the same token, since activities are scaled back, so is fundraising. There's no reason to raise thousands and thousands of dollars when band, athletics, and all the clubs are doing the same thing.

My opinion is - keep plugging away, but find your niche.

We've done a few things to try and stimulate parent involvement in our MS. One of the most helpful tools is our email list. For some reason, once the kids get into MS, they "forget" to take home anything they don't think is important. We send out a biweekly email listing upcoming events and important dates. We also try to post newsletters and flyers on our school's website so that parents can read or download anything they need. We also use the emails to recruits chairpersons and volunteers.

In elementary school the children followed their parents to school events, however in middle school its the kids who lead. We finally realized this and are trying to come up with events that will attract the kids who in turn will hopefully bring their parents. We are having a tee shirt design contest and the winning student design will be announced at our International Dinner. We are hoping that this brings the kids and their parents.

Debbie

Here's what I found as far as Middle School activities--

I planned a Movie Night specifically for Middle school. Big Failure! The younger kids really wanted to come so we just made it an event for 1st-8th. We had tons of younger kids and we did get a fair number of 6th graders and a few 7th graders.

Basically, they don't want to hang out with parents. They like the events for just the kids.

PMCW