How room parent is selected ?

[Anonymous]

We receive an email that our elementary school wants every classroom has a room parent to deal with events & fundraising. Our back to school night is coming up in person. How does room parent is selected? It would be best if someone volunteers. What happens if no one volunteers?

[Anonymous]

Generally they select whoever volunteers first. You can even have more than one room parent to spread the work around. If nobody volunteers then there is no room Parent. No room parent means nobody to coordinate parties.

[Anonymous]

They take volunteers, usually will accept what they can get especially with younger grades and overlap the times they are in the classroom. I’ve seen some show up at regular times 3-5 days per week. Most teachers are happy to have the extra set of hands. At school they make copies, help get out materials for the next lesson, help with field trips, help with organizing the classroom, change bulletin boards, check backpacks, help with room clean up, help compose emails or notes home, collect money for class events, grade basic worksheets that have an answer key, etc. Basically anything that keeps the teacher focused more on the students and teaching. I’m not as familiar with what hands off room parents do honestly, I’ve not met any of those.

[Anonymous]

Pp, I think you’re confusing volunteers with room parents. They’re separate. In my experience teachers will take all of the volunteers they can take to help with everything you’ve described. But room parents is different and might require meeting and coordinating for parties and events and fundraising‘s. The room parents are the ones who collect teachers gifts etc.

[Anonymous]

In my experience, which is cynical, it is professional full time mom types (SAHMs) with other kids in the school who are active in the PTA. Good luck if you want to be room mom and you are a working mom of 1 child and are new to the school: no one will take you seriously.

As you get up in grades there is bit more room for new faces to contribute.

The further away from DC you live, the more this is true; the closer in you live, the more flexible it is and first-come-first-serve is more apt. But it is always harder to find room parents for the older grades.

Also sometimes the room parent volunteers don't work out: I ended up being de facto room parent once when the actual room parent only collected money for gifts and I let the teacher know I could help out - she just came directly to me for everything.

[Anonymous]

Our school has 4 room parents for each class. They send a signupgenius for people to sign up. Lower grades fill up much faster than higher grades.

[Anonymous]

If no one volunteers they do individual recruiting at our school - reaching out to see if anyone will do it. If not, there simply isn’t a room parent for the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our school has 4 room parents for each class. They send a signupgenius for people to sign up. Lower grades fill up much faster than higher grades.

Parents get jaded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We receive an email that our elementary school wants every classroom has a room parent to deal with events & fundraising. Our back to school night is coming up in person. How does room parent is selected? It would be best if someone volunteers. What happens if no one volunteers?

First sucker to raise a hand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, which is cynical, it is professional full time mom types (SAHMs) with other kids in the school who are active in the PTA. Good luck if you want to be room mom and you are a working mom of 1 child and are new to the school: no one will take you seriously.

As you get up in grades there is bit more room for new faces to contribute.

The further away from DC you live, the more this is true; the closer in you live, the more flexible it is and first-come-first-serve is more apt. But it is always harder to find room parents for the older grades.

Also sometimes the room parent volunteers don't work out: I ended up being de facto room parent once when the actual room parent only collected money for gifts and I let the teacher know I could help out - she just came directly to me for everything.

At our school anyway, there was a lot of variability among the classes in regards to room parent volunteers. My DD's kindergarten class had 3 room parents! Whereas other classes had no one step up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, which is cynical, it is professional full time mom types (SAHMs) with other kids in the school who are active in the PTA. Good luck if you want to be room mom and you are a working mom of 1 child and are new to the school: no one will take you seriously.

As you get up in grades there is bit more room for new faces to contribute.

The further away from DC you live, the more this is true; the closer in you live, the more flexible it is and first-come-first-serve is more apt. But it is always harder to find room parents for the older grades.

Also sometimes the room parent volunteers don't work out: I ended up being de facto room parent once when the actual room parent only collected money for gifts and I let the teacher know I could help out - she just came directly to me for everything.

At our school there were tons of professional moms who volunteered. Most had high powered jobs too like lobbyists and Ph.D. researchers and that kind of thing but they all were meticulously organized. I felt like it was easier for me to work with them because they didn't get bogged down in little things and were very efficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, which is cynical, it is professional full time mom types (SAHMs) with other kids in the school who are active in the PTA. Good luck if you want to be room mom and you are a working mom of 1 child and are new to the school: no one will take you seriously.

As you get up in grades there is bit more room for new faces to contribute.

The further away from DC you live, the more this is true; the closer in you live, the more flexible it is and first-come-first-serve is more apt. But it is always harder to find room parents for the older grades.

Also sometimes the room parent volunteers don't work out: I ended up being de facto room parent once when the actual room parent only collected money for gifts and I let the teacher know I could help out - she just came directly to me for everything.

At our school there were tons of professional moms who volunteered. Most had high powered jobs too like lobbyists and Ph.D. researchers and that kind of thing but they all were meticulously organized. I felt like it was easier for me to work with them because they didn't get bogged down in little things and were very efficient.

No dads?

[Anonymous]

Are there actually people who want to be a room parent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there actually people who want to be a room parent?

Not me. I've served in a variety of volunteer roles and never ever want to be the room parent. Hard pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, which is cynical, it is professional full time mom types (SAHMs) with other kids in the school who are active in the PTA. Good luck if you want to be room mom and you are a working mom of 1 child and are new to the school: no one will take you seriously.

As you get up in grades there is bit more room for new faces to contribute.

The further away from DC you live, the more this is true; the closer in you live, the more flexible it is and first-come-first-serve is more apt. But it is always harder to find room parents for the older grades.

Also sometimes the room parent volunteers don't work out: I ended up being de facto room parent once when the actual room parent only collected money for gifts and I let the teacher know I could help out - she just came directly to me for everything.

At our school anyway, there was a lot of variability among the classes in regards to room parent volunteers. My DD's kindergarten class had 3 room parents! Whereas other classes had no one step up.

In kindergarten it's easy to find people who don't know any better. They wise up after the first year.