One year we tried having the meetings at nite. The next year we tried alternating nite then day. This year at the beginning of the year at we set the meeting for the second Tuesday of the month at 8:15-9:15a.m. in the Library. The thought behind this is: If working parents wanted to attend they new exactly when the meeting would be held and could make arrangements way in advance to attend. After questioning parents and teachers, I discovered that parents and teachers very rarely came to the nite meetings because they were to tired, got home late had to cook supper and help children with homework etc. We found that we were losing our "Old Faithfuls". This topic actually came up in our February meeting and all of the people attending said they would not come if it was at nite. One note I worked outside the home also.
This is so amazing how this exact topic has been the purpose of a survey our PTO is doing right now. Results so far, many want an AM meeting, a compromise I would like to work on, monthly AM meetings with a evening meeting quarterly. The point of the AM meeting was to get the parents already at the school to volunteer in a short meeting reasoning being they are already showing the intrest in the school, get they to a meeting they can attend. Yes I did get ALOT of flack from the VP as she works but I did point out to her she was/is THE ONLY working Mom that was present that night and the past few meetings.
Right now our meetings are at 6:00 Monday nights, and we fight football season, then holidays, etc.
Right now I'm more upset with a survey comment that said our meetings are too long and we didn't purchase the new playground for the new school! Our meeting last night was 30 minutes long and in three years we have raised $5000- not even enough to buy a slide! Sorry needed to vent......
We have board meetings once a month, but our general membership meetings are monthly (with a few months skipped, i.e October/ December/March) at 6:30 p.m. And we have great attendance! How? Well, at the beginning of the year we assign each grade level and the music department to arrange for some entertainment for a specific meeting month. We've had performances from all four grades (K thru 3), a special Christmas music and performance program and some specific choir performances. We conduct our business meeting before the performances so we have a captive audience. The parents love it, they get their information (we also send a monthly newsletter) and their kids get to perform. They sit through the business meeting (usually kept to less than 20 minutes) and we sometimes have a guest speaker with a ten minute time limit. Then the kids perform and the video cameras roll! The whole process takes less than an hour, and we have a membership and SCRIP table set up to accommodate the traffic and make some extra bucks.
We also scheduled meetings (again, during the evening) while the book fair was running. The book fair opened before the meeting, closed for the meeting and reopened for an hour afterwards. We helped to staff the book fair (the library gets the funds, not PTO) and had great success.
Hey, we tried to have "just a business PTO meeting" once last year - - we had less than twenty parents (out of 700 families), fewer teachers (out of 60+ staff members, most of whom are PTO members) and one heck of a rotten meeting! Won't do THAT again!!!
We are actually at PC (Parent Club), once in a while a teacher will come, but not often. We do offer childcare, free to anyone who comes to the meetings in the evening, but my kids are usually the only ones.
Just like PRES88, everything is running smoothly, but it is the same core group doing everything. The idea of changing the meeting to morning is to possibly attract more parents (at least stay at home ones), to come and get more involved. I don't really like the idea of excluding working parents, but they are not coming to the meeting in the evening anyway.
The meetings have always been &PM on Tuesday once a month. The executive board meets at 6 or 6:30 the same day. I have left it like this since electred Pres because I work days in another state. Attendence is actually down this year but everthing is running smoothly so I have not pushed the issue. Last year we had 20 or so at a meeting, this year it has been about 10.
We rarely have a teacher in attendance. We call ourselves the "elementary school association"- teacher is nowhere in our name. The administrators never miss a meeting- they actually prefer morning meetings. We don't provide babysitting at any meetings. It's never been asked for. If people brought it up as an issue we would certainly make arrangements. People do bring their kids to meetings sometimes, it's rarely a problem. At morning meetings especially, they'll be parents with younger children coloring and snacking.
