At my daughters school's school we have a speaker at most of the bi monthly meetings. We have had Pediatricians, local library, police on child and home safety, a lady came in and talked about local parks and other recreation for children, a lady came in to talk about proper use of car seats and the expiration dates (in fl they should be thrown away after 5 years, not passed on due to heat) and other various items. I think we even had a company called Doing Dinner come in. They have a kitchen with many stations set up. You go and prepare a weeks menu in one sitting and then just put them in the oven for dinner when you need them. Makes prep easier and every thing simple.

We hold our meetings once a month. The longest they last is 45 minutes. We have a full agenda, old business, new buisness, etc... yet are usually done in 30 minutes....and we are the PTO for 3 schools so all three principals give us a "rundown" of what has taken place since the last meeting:confused. So I am really curious of what is being discussed at everyone else's meetings that last so long. Are we missing something?

beignets;133253 wrote: we actually only have 'big' meetings, open to all, every 3 months. they last 30min.
the board only, meets on a monthly basis.

Can you offer an agenda for one of your 'big' meetings that you have every 3 months? I'd like to start implicating these 'big' meetings with our PTO. Right now, we only have monthly board meetings. Thank you.

we actually only have 'big' meetings, open to all, every 3 months. they last 30min.
the board only, meets on a monthly basis.

You know PresidentJim, we used to have the same problems with our meetings-they lasted forever and sometimes when they were all over it seemed like we had accomplished nothing. The first year I served as President our board vowed to find ways to get that meeting time down to an hour and get the business accomplished during that time. It sounds like you already use an agenda for your meetings and that was our first step too. We also communicated to everyone that the meetings were going to be shortened, that we would have an agenda and stick to it, and that discussion of items would be limited to 5 minutes. It really has worked for us. We've been doing this for 6 years now and rarely have a meeting go over an hour.

As for having other presentations during meetings: we schedule those to occur in months where we don't have a lot on the agenda(nothing during budget discussions or event planning months). We started them as a way to communicate what was happening in our school to our parents and found that it can bring more parents to our meetings.

I guess it all depends on your school and how your meetings go.

As a PTO President I am somewhat against using the monthly meetings for something other than PTO business. Though there were a couple of times throughout this past year where the Principal and the Superintendant of Schools presented their priorities, which I feel falls into the category of .

I find that it is difficult enough to get a meeting over within an hour and a half to two hours (though I strive for one hour). Each meeting I provide a section on the agenda for the Principal's Update. At times, often due to something going on within the school, this 5 minute update, which is meant to be things like "The Kindergarten classes went on their Field Trip", or "the after school programs are all set up", instead turns into a one-half hour long issues discussion that at times I've had to kind of break up so that we could get back to business. When there has been an issue that would require more discussion the Principal has set up his own evening. For example, explaining how the report cards work.

So I have found that one of the major complaints by the majority of PTOers is that the meetings are too long. Trying to keep them to an hour, which is on the verge of impossible, is tough enough without trying to add speakers. Our school's Principal has explained that at other schools the Principal's there complain that the PTO meetings are nothing more than complaint sessions. I don't think this is good for business, so I would advise against other than school administrator speakers.

Good luck,
PresidentJim