Thank you all for your advice. We had a board meeting and I think I got through to them to remember that we are doing this for the kids. I know the teachers put in a lot of time for our kids and it is appreciated. The majority of my board is starting to understand that as well.

We went to a scholastic workshop. And learned a LOT. So when we got ready for our book fair. we 'invited' the teachers to a preview with coffee, rolls, juice, We also 'advertised' a drawing for books. We were going to have a drawing every 5 minutes for a $5.00 gift certificate, but the teacher must be present to win. Well, I was not 'thrilled' with the turn out, so every teacher that came in got a gift certificate and then we drew for 2 $25.00 winners. WOW were the ones that didn't come in sorry. They wondered why they weren't invited. The response to them was, 'the principal e-mailed everyone with the invitation."
Then to make sure the parents knew about the book fair, we sent home a form for the parents to fill out, (more to up date our data base) and then with those forms, we had a drawing and 4 students received a $25.00 gift certificate and the teachers received $50.00 from the resource book. They were so happy. And so were the parents.

This is a familiar post on here, but let's try to remember a few things. As PTO parents, many of us come to school after we have done our day of work. We are there to support our kids and our families.

For teachers, they have put in 8 hours of work (and usually more prior to and following the day) plus many have their own children's PTO to be involved with. More and more is being put on their plates with No Child Left Behind and very few items are being removed. Time is a major issue.

Our teachers are great and regularly show up at the big events and willing to help (emails through the principal to them all). But at meetings, we usually have just 2 representatives who are elected members of our board. They have full voting rights and are the conduit for staff concerns, information, and requests.

Attending a book fair preview is nice and all, but many times the books come in for just a week and it is usually at conference time or something else when the teachers have other concerns to address. Offer the preview during the day, have food, have prizes, and tell them what they get out of the book fair. If you do it through scholastic and you take the profit in books, fill their classroom libraries. That's always the better option, and it shouldn't just fall to the Librarians to pick books.

Well, bribe them! What I mean is make it worth it to them...

We are very lucky that we have always had very supportive teachers and staff, though until this year we pretty much never had any show up to meetings unless they wanted something. For some of our major events we would usually get one or two to at least make an appearance.

This year we had our second annual Back to School Ice Cream Party, outside near the playground with the local Radio Disney Party Patrol providing the music, games and entertainment. We hold this event the first day of the school year, which oddly is often a half day? Anyway, understanding that many families must take at least a half day off anyway we used this to get a big turnout, which seemed to work. We promote the event as a first chance to get to know your child's teacher opportunity, and last year this was great, for the small handful of teachers that actually migrated outside. This year we really wanted to increase this, but we also understood that we can't force them. So we created two amazing Teacher/staff baskets with just about everything a teacher would want. Automatic stapler, automatic pencial sharpener, calculator, gift cards, highlighters, pens, a coffee mug, and much, much more. We had a lot of this donated and promoted it as such. I placed the basket in the front office prominently with an explanation that these baskets would be raffled off to any staff members in attendance at the Back to School Ice Cream Party.

This ended up doing the trick. We ended up with 3 times more staff than the previous year. I raffled one off about half way through the party and then the other about a half hour before the end. The drawback was that the moment the raffle was over the staff made a congo line to head back inside, but this did prove to me that the concept worked. These staff members showed up because of the raffle baskets.

Also this year I've made a point of e-mailing all staff members about our meeting about a week before. I include a short summary of what we've been working on and what we'll be discussing at the meeting, as well as the agenda. I also make a point of only e-mailing those staff members that come to the meeting the minutes.

Hope some of this helps,
PresidentJim

Reading this was like reading about my own school except, we have just a few more than 3 fill out their wish lists, but no where near half of the teachers doing it. We have had our preview day for teachers right after school the day before it begins, and still no improvement. We've finally tied it in to teacher appreciation and ask the room moms to help remind the teachers, telling them we have a surprise planned, as we want to purchase some items from each wish list for them. Hopefully,this will encourage them because they know that they will be getting something they truly want and need.

It can be discouraging when it seems that your teachers have no interest in your group's events, but you are correct in reminding your parents that what you do is for the kids and that is where your focus should continue to be. You have to remember that many teachers have family committments of their own and it's not that they are trying to snub your group but may find, like many of us, that they have to priortize the activities in their life and their families come first.

If you want teachers to respond to/attend things like your book fair preview, try to offer them during the school day. When I did book fairs at the elementary my children attended, I opened up for teachers early in the morning before the students arrived and/or stayed for an hour after school ended. It actually worked better with my work schedule too! My children would come with me and help out and many times their teachers took them back to the classroom early with them or had them help them in the classroom in the afternoon! If you want them to attend meetings, perhaps you could approach your principal about seeing if the teachers would all take a turn attending. Teacher input at meetings can be truly invaluable-let the teachers know that. Also, are there any teachers that you would feel truly comfortable sitting down with and just point blank asking what the teachers think of and expect from the group? That could be just the info you need to turn the lack of participation around.

Good luck and keep us posted.