PTO Today

Photo by: Michal Marcol (freedigitalphotos.net)

I have a request for you this week rather than a tip. Would you please take two minutes and let us know the one or two things we could do for you as a PTO or PTA leader that would be of most help?

As usual, we’re in the midst of planning for the new year, and we’d love to hear from you what you’d most like us to work on. More online tools (like what)? More programs for groups (in what areas)? More freebies or giveaways? Anything else?

Respond any way you’d like. Comment below. Jump in on our message boards. Ping us on Facebook. We’d just love to hear from you. Thanks in advance for the help.

Please also accept our best wishes for a peaceful, happy, and involvement-filled New Year.

My message to you this week is simple — thanks for everything you do. I hope these next couple of weeks bring you peace and rest and great times with your families and friends. You deserve nothing less.

A friend of mine recently mentioned that it seems we’ve been talking a lot lately of the tough parts of PTOing. Dealing with drama, tough principals, embezzlement. “Doesn’t sound like something I’d want to get involved with” was his comment. And I can see his point.

So this season, I hope you’ll remember (and be rewarded for) all the great things about this work. The smiles on the kids’ faces. The schools made better by increased involvement. The lifelong friendships that are forged on the playground you built. The teachers inspired to keep at their difficult jobs because of your support. The great times shared by school families at your fun events.

That’s what makes this work so worthwhile and rewarding.

My resolution for 2010 is to remember those things more, both personally and in my writing here at PTO Today. Reminds me of one of the most popular articles ever on the website — ”One Last Dance” by Sharron Kahn Luttrell. If you’re looking for a PTO gift, give that one a read.

Still thinking about family event plans for spring? I recommend utilizing our Family Movie Night kit and info to put on a relaxing flick night. There’s a good element of fun with the added bonus of being one of the easier family nights to run.

You can order a free Family Movie Night planning kit on our website, plus find info on all of our School Family Nights. To me, these kinds of involvement events are a welcome mat to deeper involvement. Don’t charge admission. Don’t give folks the hard sell that they have to help out. Just make it a great night. The good news is that some of your attendees will have a great time and feel more comfortable getting more connected. That’s how more involvement develops — not through guilt or the like.

We’ve also recently added a brand-new Family Movie Night ”group” in our Community section on ptotoday.com. Here, you can share what’s worked and what hasn’t with other leaders running the same kind of event. We’ve even got a movie tracker, so you can review which movies worked best for school nights. I really like the movie Cars, for example, but it was a terrible choice for our last Movie Night — just way too long for 90 K-5th graders. Wish I’d known that before we picked it.

Good luck with all your involvement efforts!

After a decade of talking with PTO and PTA leaders on the phone, in person, and through our online message boards, we’ve found that one of the most common themes is how to deal with principal problems. Can the principal decide what kind of events we run? What if she gets in our way? Who has final say over fundraising and finances?

My latest video blog on who’s the boss of the PTO covers the short answer — if your parent group is independent from the school, then technically the principal does not control these decisions — and also why this isn’t really the right answer. A strong, successful parent group needs cooperation and support from the principal; you aren’t likely to get either of those if you’re fighting over territory.

So here’s this week’s tip: Instead of challenging the principal’s authority, find ways to work together. Start by thinking about concerns she might have, and what you and your fellow PTO leaders can do about them. Is the principal worried about embezzlement? Wow her with the financial controls your group uses. Did previous PTO boards plan activities that interfered with classroom time? Might make sense to check dates with teachers before printing up flyers. (Read ”Real Disputes With the Principal’‘ to see how several parent groups solved their own disagreements.)

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge; what does matter is that your PTO is doing great work for the kids and making the school a better place. That’s also the best foundation for building a strong principal-PTO partnership.

Yup — drama-filled PTO moments (and how they scare away and chase away good volunteers) seems to be a theme this week. We’ve had message board threads about presidents with bad attitudes and clashing leadership styles, among other things, and have seen stories in the news on the same kind of stuff. Ugh. The good news is, we can take steps to limit the drama. Seriously.

In my experience, PTOs and PTAs have more drama than the average organization for a couple of reasons. One is that parent groups work with our kids — and we all have very passionate opinions about what’s best for kids. Another is that in a PTO there is often no “what I say goes” authority figure who can put an end to drama that has gone too far. (Think about what you do at home when the kids take things too far.)

And there’s no doubt that all this drama hurts our groups, our schools, and our volunteers. Drama is really tiring. It saps everyone of energy. It takes the focus away from doing good work. It absolutely makes parent involvement and gaining volunteers more difficult.

I wrote a column called ‘‘Stop the PTO Drama” a while back, and the solutions remain the same. It starts with working hard to be the grownup in these situations, even when others are reenacting the worst parts of high school. Another huge factor is communication — don’t let nagging annoyances and growing bad feelings fester. Schedule a coffee or openly discuss your group’s efforts to avoid drama right at a meeting. Small dramas become debilitating dramas when not addressed.

I’ve never met a PTO volunteer who hasn’t faced her share of drama in the volunteer world. What have you faced? And what have you done about it? Would love to hear your take on dealing with drama.

Now that it’s November, I imagine your membership drive, if you have one, is over. So my question (and tip) for you this week is, why do you charge dues to belong to your PTO? I personally think it’s a bad idea, and I hope you’ll discuss it with your group before next year’s drive rolls around again.

I wrote a column called ”Just Say No to Dues” a couple of years back, and I thought I’d summarize it here.

My problem with it comes from two perspectives. First, I think dues are anti-involvement and send the wrong message to your parent community. Why do I have to pay to belong to the parent group at my kids’ school? I feel like I paid those dues with blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve already spent raising junior). Most parent groups cite increasing parent involvement as their number one goal, and then the first thing they do is put a barrier (”$5, please”) between parents and their group. I think a much better message is “All parents and guardians of XYZ School are members of our PTO, and we look forward to a great year of working together to make our school a great place for our kids.”

The second is that membership drives actually aren’t even very effective as fundraisers. You spend lots of time and energy on a membership drive…frequent reminders, sign-up tables at open house, emails, more. And for what? $500? If you have a membership drive for the money, you have much better options to consider.

My observation is that most groups have membership drives because that’s the way it’s always been done. My tip this week: It’s OK to change the way things have always been done.

Agree? Disagree? Tried it already? I’d love to hear your take on this issue. Chime in on the ”dues or no dues” thread on our message boards.

Kind of a controversial tip for you this week, and it starts with a question: Has your leadership started slipping into a “this is what works for us and we’re the only ones involved, anyway” mindset?

While I understand the thinking, slipping into that mindset is a sure-fire way to close off involvement and to earn a clique reputation, even if it’s undeserved. Think about the one parent (who barely knows you guys) who has been thinking about getting involved. Will she feel comfortable finding your house and entering this very social, personal atmosphere? Unlikely. She’ll probably choose to stay home.

But that’s just one scenario. Have you stopped doing introductions and welcomes and nametags (because, well, most of us know each other)? Have you started just scheduling the regulars to volunteer (because no one else ever wants to help)?

Leadership isn’t easy, and good leadership is often not convenient. Taking those extra steps to be welcoming and open to even the few newcomers is part of the job. Work at keeping at it even when it feels pointless. It’s not. If you do have only a small handful of core volunteers, then just one or two more can make a big difference. And remaining open to that help is essential to bringing in the newcomers.

I would love to hear whether you’ve experienced this in your group or worked to solve it in some way; please join the discussion we started on our message boards. We also have a ton of other great articles and resources on getting more parents involved.

I’ve said for a long time that the key to growing involvement is to start by getting parents into your building. You don’t grow involvement by asking for help. You grow involvement by serving. Many attendees at your family events yield more volunteers down the road. Not to mention the fact that — even if those attendees never volunteer — your school is already a better place for everyone when parents are interacting with teachers and one another.

I elaborated on this concept in a column called ”Open Doors, Lots of Them’‘. I think you’ll like it. But it’s worth mentioning that how you open doors is almost as important as opening those doors in the first place. How’s your hospitality? Do folks feel welcomed? What about guilt? Is there ever an element of guilt in your approach, as in: “Thanks for coming; this took a lot of work, maybe you could help next time.”

While it’s certainly true and understandable, it’s also exactly the wrong way to build involvement. Treating people well and avoiding guilt is what gets people talking positively about your group and coming back to more events…and eventually volunteering. Of course, that can also work in the reverse if you’re not taking the time to make your events feel special.

We’ve had a ton of community talk about family events and involvement in recent weeks. I hope you’ll join in. You can also follow me on Twitter.

A story we’ve just added to ptotoday.com, ”Communication Tips for Better Involvement,” has an idea that I really like. One creative group took their volunteer signup sheet and made it into a giant bulletin board in the school lobby. If you want to run a game at the spring carnival or read to kids at the Family Reading Night or cook spaghetti at the annual pasta feed, just put your name down in the appropriate place on the bulletin board. Everybody can see at all times which activities are planned, what volunteers are needed, and who has signed up. If you change your mind, you just erase your name.

The reason I like this so much is that it sends a strong message that PTO is about every parent in the school. Running these events is something that we all do together, not something planned and run by a few officers who you may not even know.

The way you communicate says so much about your group. In fact, many parents may only know you by your communications. You’ll improve your image if you keep things upbeat; emphasize that PTO is about everybody, not just the officers; don’t send so much home that people start to ignore it; and, of course, always check carefully for errors before you send anything out. You’ll also find great tips for improving your newsletter, website, flyers, and more on ptotoday.com.

How great is it when your group has that one mom or dad who’s a pro at writing PTO letters or designing PTO flyers? It’s like your own little marketing department, and it makes a big difference in how your group is perceived at school.

The trouble is, though, that most groups don’t have that design pro or, when you do, her darn kids grow up and she moves on. It’s so frustrating trying to find just the right words for the letter or searching through bad clip art for the flyer when you’re just not that good at it. Worse yet, your group is sometimes judged by the quality of those amateur productions.

So the question is, does your group have some sort of storing or sharing system for last year’s and this year’s forms and flyers so that next year’s volunteers (possibly you again) will start out ahead? It’s an important concept. And it’s the spirit behind one of the most practical, most popular parts of ptotoday.com. Called the PTO Today File Exchange, there are already more than 700 various forms and flyers up there for you to borrow from. Here are three great examples of really practical files for you:

• Committee Chair Success Tips
• 112 Suggested Auction Items
• ”10 Reasons To Get Involved” Flyer

Take them, make them your own, and make your work that much easier. And if you like your own results, upload them back to the File Exchange for another leader to use. Kind of cool.