Timing of PTA/PTO meetings
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Anonymous
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When does your PTA/PTO meet? How frequently? Are they attended by many working parents?
Is it customary to host them at lunchtime so parents don't have to take much time off from either work nor their evening kids time? Thanks! |
Anonymous
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Monthly in evening. Considered sometimes doing daytime, but then teachers can't come. Kids sometimes came along w/ parents and would color, play on iPad, eat snacks, etc. in back of the room.
Lunchtime would be impossible for me because kid's school is not close to my job. Maybe if I could work from home (which is close to school) that day. Certainly seems like something worth trying out once or twice. |
Anonymous
Parent of middle and high schooler. Our monthly PTA/PTO meetings have always been in the evening. For one year our elementary school experimented alternating meetings before school and in the evenings to help working parents out. Most parents preferred evening. IME meeting attendance varied based on time of year and agenda (back to school night = always a full house), attendance tends to drop off deeper into the year and ramp up at end of year. For me, lunchtime meetings would have been a nightmare -- 45 minute to/from school-office each way plus the time at the meeting. I wouldn't have gone. |
Anonymous
| Always evenings, always the same time in the evenings--on the one day we had a prior commitment. If you are in the PTA and seeking to do something, I would humbly ask you to switch up the meetings. Do a morning, do an afternoon, do a Saturday, etc. |
Anonymous
| Evening meetings are difficult to attend whether you work or not since they are at the worst time for most kids' evening routine schedules. Everyone finds a way to make it work if they can. Lunch meetings would cater to at stay or work home parents or people with offices near school, so would be a much smaller draw. Our school fluctuates the meeting time between early evening to accommodate teachers and later evening to accommodate parents with long commutes. |
Anonymous
| ours are monthly in the evening. PTA provides babysitting and dinner for kids. |
Anonymous
| Lunchtime meetings. That seems kinda nutty. Not sure who that might work for beyond SAHMs. |
Anonymous
Out school does this and it really helps encourage attendance. Evenings are tough, but it's really the only option that can work for a broad group of people. If the PTA can make it easier to attend by providing childcare and dinner, it's hard to see why you can't break your routine once in a while. The other option is not to attend meetings I guess |
Anonymous
| No idea. My kid was in fifth grade before I even realized there was a PTA at all. |
Anonymous
This seems to work really well at our school. |
Anonymous
| always during the day. never in evening. SAHM can't attend in evening. |
Anonymous
| I have never heard of daytime PTA/PTSA meetings... and I'm a teacher! It would mean that kids, teachers and working parents were excluded and only the SAHM/SAHDs would be running the whole organization. Yikes. |
Anonymous
| Our school seems to have started a Friday morning meeting. Totally unclear who they are targeting. There are no SAHM moms in our transitioning school. If anything they are purposely trying to minimize the gentrifiers from taking over. It's definitely odd and gets people talking. |
Anonymous
Huh? I'm a SAHM and my jusbans and I attend every meeting. They are always in the evening. We have babysitting in the kindergarten room. During the day would be much worse for me. No babysitting from hs volunteers would mean my younger child would be with me the entire time, potentially causing distractions. |
Anonymous
Wasn't that the way the old timers pulled off the Payne mutiny a few years ago and kicked out the gentrifiers? Or was it at Ludlow Taylor? |