April 21, 2008

Dear PTA Members, Lockwood Parents and Community Members,

This has been an exciting year as President of the PTA at Lockwood School. We accomplished many goals and raised funds for various needs. I believe we had many successes, but I also believe we have many things to improve.

I came upon my PTA position completely by accident. I noticed the repeated messages in the school newsletter asking for help. I volunteered to help as necessary, and in August, I found out I was the PTA President. The September 2007 PTA meeting was my first and I have been learning “on the job” ever since. Although I have been a little overwhelmed, I have met some great people, made some new friends, and enjoyed being a part of the community and school events the PTA has sponsored.

For many years, PTA has struggled to find volunteers for the various events held throughout the year. Attendance at our monthly meetings is disheartening and, as many past presidents have also expressed, we find ourselves calling on the same volunteers over and over. I feel I have neglected the record keeping and organizational items that PTA presidents should focus on and instead found myself chairing or being heavily involved in almost every event we sponsored this year; I believe the other board members echo my sentiment. When I volunteered, I didn’t realize how badly volunteers were truly needed.

I am writing to ask you to please attend our May Organizational Meeting. We want to be better prepared as we enter the next school year and we need your help! At the meeting, we will be deciding which events we will sponsor next year, and we will cancel events that have no volunteers.

We are open to suggestions for making the PTA more effective and to ideas for increasing parent involvement. We have discussed many options for improvement including revising our meeting schedule, less general meetings, and/or a different meeting time.

At the meeting, we hope to form committees for each 2008-2009 PTA event and arrange meeting times and places for each committee to do the planning; if we do the busy work this summer, we will have more time for our busy lives, we will be better prepared, we will have better events, and we will get to know the parents in our community.

Please bring your ideas to our May meeting so we can work together to improve the PTA and make a positive difference in our school. Your input is very valuable and it is truly needed!

Sincerely,

Barbara Frank
671-7022