My First PTA Board Meeting as President

Tonight, I hosted my first PTA board meeting as President.  I thought I’d share some details, in case any of you happen to also have “sucker” tattooed on your foreheads, too.

I have served on the PTA board for the past two years as only an active member.  I wasn’t in an officer position.  But I spent enough time on the board to know that the key to success in a PTA is having enough volunteers.  We had a board that was about 8-10 people, which meant only about 5-7 of them showed up to a meeting, given our busy schedules.  But if no one comes to your meetings, then the weight of responsibility continues to fall on the same 5-7 people all year along.

This year, one of my main goals is to expand the involvement of our PTA members and I thought the best way to do that was by expanding the size of our board.  Rather than just having the officers (president, VP, secretary, treasurer, teacher representatives) and then two general board members (like I was), I decided to open the board up to ANYONE.  At the end of last school year this past May, I sent fliers home with all our students listing out any activities we would be having next year.  In the flier, it asked parents to check any they would like to volunteer for.  At the bottom of the flier, there was a place where parents could also sign up to join the board.  This ended up being a great thing because not only did I recruit about 10 different parents for the board, but I started my summer out with a pretty good list of parents who wanted to volunteer for events next year.  We were off to a great start!

On my end, I found a vice president who also served on the board with me last year and a treasurer who I am personal friends with that I know it not only a tough cookie, but a great cheerleader for the school.  Between the three of us and a very enthusiastic principal, we were able to then recruit another 10 parents to join our board.  By June 1, I had all my elected officials (who were officially elected at our final PTA meeting in May) and a board of 20 parents!

Our PTA has typically met once a month, but I don’t anticipate having the entire board of 30-something people present at every meeting.  For one thing, that’s a strain on everyone’s schedules, but it can also be a little chaotic to get things done with so many people present.  So, at this first meeting, we set our calendar of events for the year and then divvied out chairs for each event.  Now, at each monthly meeting during the school year, the officers will attend and whoever is involved in whatever events are on the agenda will attend.  I will open the invitation up to any board member to attend any meeting, but it is only necessary to attend when your event is on the agenda.  I think that’s going to make the best use of everyone’s time, without having to put extra strain on our officers.

Tonight was an introductory meeting for our board.  Most of the volunteers have not served with the PTA before or have not taken on a leadership in the PTA before.  A lot of them didn’t know me or other board members, either.  So, instead of doing our first meeting at the school where we usually have PTA meetings, I decided it would be cozier and friendlier if we did it at my house.  We had it tonight from 7:00-8:30pm and I served dessert, lemonade, coffee, and water.  It was really simple to host and I think it made a big impact on volunteers.

I started the meeting by having everyone go around and introduce themselves, tell what grade their children are going into, and explain one thing they would like to see happen in the PTA this year.  After introductions, I explained the function of our board and how I envisioned the year going.  We talked about how the meetings will work and what the role of each officer will be.  I had printed out packets for each board member that included a list of contact information for all board members, in addition to a rough draft of a schedule from last year’s events.  We went through the list of events and decided which ones we wanted to keep, replace, or change.  Our principal was at the meeting, so we were able to put dates on each event and we got a chair for just about every event!

Here’s hoping that this small little event might have set us up for a great, productive, smoothly executed school year!