Is your Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) or Parent Teacher Association (PTA) struggling with your general membership meetings?
Are the meetings drag or seem like a chore to run or attend?
Are too few parents coming to the meetings, making it feel like no one is invested in your school parent group?
Or the meetings are kind of a hot mess, running long or filled with infighting and drama.
If your PTO’s meetings aren’t healthy and productive gatherings of enthusiastic parent volunteers working in collaboration with the Principal and Teacher Liaison, then this post is for you!
The good news is that I have seven different actions steps that’ll markedly improve your school parent group’s meetings, resulting in more efficient meetings with productive discussions and meaningful decisions.
Let’s get into specific actions to take to improve your PTO’s meetings.
Publicize Meetings
One of the mains reasons that parents aren’t showing up for your PTO meeting is because they don’t know about it.
Maybe you’ve mentioned it once or twice.
But that’s not enough.
You’ve got to tell people about the meetings more than once and well in advance.
You cannot spring events on people last minute or mention PTO events in an offhand way.
You have to tell parents ahead of time and in many different ways.
The vast majority people don’t take action on things when they hear it only once or twice.
Usually, it takes many more times for the information to sink in.
Work towards consistently publicizing the meeting dates as many places as possible.
This post covers 21 ways to publicize PTO events, so I suggest starting there if you’re only using a few methods of communication with your school families.
Stick it To Them (Literally)
Along with publicizing the meetings, send plenty of reminders too.
One method of a can’t miss meeting reminder that works well at the elementary school level is to pop a meeting reminder sticker on students right before dismissal.
Younger kids will delight at the opportunity to be a walking reminder and can encourage their parents to attend the meeting.
If you don’t have enough volunteers to sticker each student’s, this is a chance to ask for the teachers’ cooperation to make it happen.
Teachers can pass out the stickers for the children to stick to their shirts or if your school employs a daily planner system, the kids can add them to their planner.
Parents will see the sticker when they sign their student’s planner and the reminder will nudge the parents to attend the meeting!
Use an Agenda
One basic for better meetings is to follow a meeting agenda and provide printed copies for all attendees.
This is a super simple non-negotiable and common sense step to take that is too often disregarded.
I once attended an athletic boosters meeting for my son’s school where the group president had an agenda, but it was only on her phone.
She gave a pretty lame excuse about why she didn’t have agenda copies for everyone else.
This was my first (and last!) time attending this group’s meetings.
The lack of meeting agendas was a clear indication that the group was dysfunctional (not the only one, mind you).
It was off-putting to not have a copy of the agenda.
I honestly felt like an outsider and that my involvement was not welcome.
Because I’d never been to a meeting before, it was especially hard to track what was going on, who the specific leaders were, and how I could follow up with anyone after the fact if I had questions.
This isn’t how you want your meeting attendees to feel.
It’s the exact opposite!
If your group wants to go paperless, find a way to project the digital agenda for all in the room to see.
Don’t assume everyone will have a device capable of viewing the agenda available to them.
Their child might be using their phone to keep quiet and busy during the meeting!
Meeting Agendas Organize Meetings
The other reason to use a meeting agenda is to keep the meetings short, organized and on track.
Long meetings are not enjoyable, nor will they inspire enthusiasm in others to return next month for a repeat performance.
Referencing the meeting agenda throughout the meeting enables the PTO President to ensure topics are being discussed in a timely manner.
If the meeting has already been in session for 45 minutes and the group is only half way through the agenda, it’s time to table some issues and speed up the discussions.
Agendas help organize the discussions for the group to consider, which can make meetings go faster.
Prep in Advance
If you are the President or another leader for your PTO, know that you will need to speak at the meeting to give an update about what you’ve been working on.
Take some time in advance to organize your thoughts and prepare what you’ll talk about so that you won’t be caught flat-footed during the meeting.
So many PTO leaders don’t like being in the spotlight and nerves can get the best of them.
Putting together a plan for what you’ll talk about during the meeting helps quell hesitations and will streamline your meeting remarks.
For example, if you’re the Membership Chair, tasked with providing an opening inspiration to set the tone of the PTO meeting, you’ll need to select a quote or saying in advance.
Also take a bit of time to think about questions you need answered by the group or if you’ll need help to make your plans come to life.
Recruiting volunteers to help spread the workload is the ideal time to make the ask so that you don’t have to scramble after the fact.
Take Attendance
The next thing you want to be doing for better meetings is to capture attendance during the meeting.
Use sign in sheets to capture the contact information for parents and guardians who attend.
After the meeting, reach out and thank them for attending the meeting and let them know when the next PTO meeting is.
Right before the next meeting, reach out to them again and invite them to attend.
When you make the effort to reach out to parents personally, they’re more likely to attend because of the personal touch.
A small committee of PTO volunteers, including the PTO President, Secretary and Membership Chair can be involved in this process.
Get Resources
Another aspect of running meetings is to get additional guidance on how to run them!
No one is born knowing how to run meetings, so you’ll need to learn it somewhere!
That’s where the Meeting Success Kit comes into play.
It’s a rich collection of done for you resources that’ll support you every step of the way.
If you liked the ideas shared in this post, then you’ll especially love the centerpiece of the kit, the How to Run a Meeting e-book.
It’s chick filled with everything to do before, during and after meetings to ensure your PTO stays on track and has parents coming back month after month.
Transform Your Meetings from Dread to Delight!
Stop wasting hours on unproductive meetings.
Discover the secrets to running engaging, efficient sessions in under an hour.
Our Meeting Success Kit empowers you to captivate parents and PTO members, turning them into eager participants.
Say goodbye to meeting dread and hello to energized, productive gatherings.
Learn more and reclaim your time!
Get Support
Leverage the support and ideas of others to improve your school parent group’s meetings.
This post has listed many great ideas to improve your PTO’s meetings, but other PTO volunteers have fantastic ideas to add to the list!
One place to get access to all of these fantastic ideas is to join me and 8000 other decimated PTO volunteers in the Super Star PTO Leader Facebook Group.
The community is free to join, so request to join and be sure to answer the membership questions!
Watch This
Prefer to watch a video covering seven ways to improve your PTO/PTA meetings?
Give this video a watch:
Over To You
PTO Meetings don’t have the best reputation amongst school parents and guardians, but using these simple steps will instantly make your meetings better:
- Publicize the meetings early and often. Parents can’t come if they don’t know about it in the first place.
- Leverage opportunities to remind parents about the meetings. Parents have a lot on their plates and using students as a walking reminder is a fun way to evolve students and boost the likelihood of the reminders being seen!
- Prepare for the meeting in advance to organize your throughs and planned report.
- Use a written agenda for the meetings to make attendees feel welcome and part of the process.
- Shortcut learning the best practices for running PTO meetings by getting resources that lay everything out for you.
- Don’t go it alone! Join the Super Star PTO Leaders Facebook Community for more ideas and inspiration!
Better PTO meetings are in your future when you follow any of these seven steps!
