Results of the 2020 PTO Survey
We want to thank the 71 people who took our PTO Survey January 14 through February 10, 2020.
Here are the results from our 10 questions along with Action Items the PTO has set in place, where applicable.
Here are the results from our 10 questions along with Action Items the PTO has set in place, where applicable.
Communication
The best way to stay informed (Q1):
Most important topics to be informed about (Q7):
Open Feedback (Q10):
- Email newsletter “What’s new with the PTO” - 92%
- Flyers send home - 51%
- Facebook and/or Twitter - 41%
Most important topics to be informed about (Q7):
- Informal updates from Mrs. MacDonald
- Volunteer opportunities
- Yearly plans and strategies
Open Feedback (Q10):
- Communication overall is appreciated
- Be transparent about decisions being made
Communications | Areas of Opportunities
Let’s continue with:
Informal updates about the school
Suggestions:
- Sending the Newsletter frequently
- Sending out flyers for specific shout outs
- Including topics that people want to be informed about:
Informal updates about the school
- Volunteer opportunities
- Yearly plans and strategies
Suggestions:
- Make even more/better use of Facebook
- Call to Action: Like our PTO Facebook page to get the latest updates on events at the school
- Make informal updates from the Principal easily accessible
- PTO Action Item: PTO to post Meeting Minutes for parents to review
- PTO Action Item: PTO to post Meeting Minutes for parents to review
- Make volunteer opportunities easily accessible (clear, simple, at one place)
- PTO Action Item: Log into your Membership Toolkit account and look at all volunteer options in one place!!
- PTO Action Item: Log into your Membership Toolkit account and look at all volunteer options in one place!!
- Communicate out how a specific event or activity supports the educational needs of the school when advertising for an event/activity or when request volunteers
- PTO Action Item: PTO currently communicates out our yearly fundraising goal and are working to give families updates more regularly throughout the year on the status of our goal
- PTO Action Item: PTO currently communicates out our yearly fundraising goal and are working to give families updates more regularly throughout the year on the status of our goal
PTO Meetings
People will attend PTO meetings more if:
Times to attend a PTO meeting:
Answers varied: all time frames do and do not work for people
Time to attend after school activities:
Note: Most people (59%) don’t like to attend PTO meetings compared to other ways to volunteer
- Remote access was provided - 51%
Times to attend a PTO meeting:
Answers varied: all time frames do and do not work for people
- Does NOT work: Morning (9-12a) and after school (3-5p)
- Does work for the majority:
- Face-to-face meetings work best at evening (7-9p, 51%) or dinner time (5-7p, 39%)
- Remote (online) access works best at evening (7-9p, 45%) or lunch time (12-2p, 42%)
Time to attend after school activities:
- Dinner time (5:00-7:00pm) - 72%
Note: Most people (59%) don’t like to attend PTO meetings compared to other ways to volunteer
PTO Meetings | Areas of Opportunity
Let’s continue with:
Suggestions:
- Vary with time frames for both online and face-to-face PTO meetings
- Hosting a Parent Update Hour, with topics that interests majority of the people:
- Informal updates from Mrs. MacDonald
- Volunteer opportunities
- Yearly plans and strategies
- Informal updates from Mrs. MacDonald
- Hosting after school activities around dinner time (5:00-7:00 pm)
Suggestions:
- Host online PTO meetings and remember lessons learned
- Host online PTO meetings during lunch time and evenings (if possible)
- Host face-to-face PTO meetings around dinner time and evenings (if possible)
- PTO Action Item: PTO will now be hosting all of their meetings on Zoom! They will remain on the 2nd Tuesday of the month but will be held at 7:00pm as that time seems to work better for families. Link to PTO Meetings (you will need to log into your Membership Toolkit account to gain access to this page)
- PTO Action Item: PTO will now be hosting all of their meetings on Zoom! They will remain on the 2nd Tuesday of the month but will be held at 7:00pm as that time seems to work better for families. Link to PTO Meetings (you will need to log into your Membership Toolkit account to gain access to this page)
- Share recording of PTO meetings (re-play via email signups)
- PTO Action Item: We will look into recording our meetings but you can always refer to Meeting Minutes
- PTO Action Item: We will look into recording our meetings but you can always refer to Meeting Minutes
- Make informal updates from the the Principal easily accessible
- PTO Action Item: All Principal updates will be available on the Meeting Minutes page of our website
- Parent Call to Action: Feel free to email Mrs. MacDonald if you have any additional questions that may not have been answered during meetings
- PTO Action Item: All Principal updates will be available on the Meeting Minutes page of our website
Volunteering
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People like to volunteer the most (Q3):
People are divided about helping at or organizing an event
People don’t like to:
People like about their volunteering that they (Q4):
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Involvement & Focus
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People found the school and PTO welcoming (Q2):
People feel involved with the PTO (Q1):
People would like the PTO to focus on each year (Q8):
People are divided about staff appreciation and providing volunteers for school events and field trips |
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Volunteering and Involvement & Focus | Areas of Opportunity
Let’s continue with:
Suggestions:
- Creating and communicating a variety of ways to be involved with the school and the PTO
- Showing volunteers diversity of people’s interest (encourages people to step up)
- Visualizing how the PTO in general ‘supports educational needs’
Suggestions:
- Include the ‘why people volunteer’ in communication (emails, flyers, sign-ups) and volunteer recruitment:
- Contribute to their child's educational journey
- Able to spend time with their child while they help
- Get to know and interact with people
- Serving the community
- PTO Action Item: We will be starting a 'Committee Spotlight' series, introducing each committee and their co-chairs. This will call out what these committees do, why the co-chairs volunteer, activities for the upcoming year, and pictures from previous events.
- Integrate/create activities/events so volunteers can:
- Spend time with their child and their child’s teacher
- Contribute to their child’s education
- Support the educational needs of the school
- Parent Call to Action: The PTO supports a Room Parent for each teacher. This role is a huge support to our teachers and staff. If this is something you are interested in, please contact the PTO or your child's teacher and find out how you can be a room parent.
- Discuss/re-evaluate the PTO focus and review PTO events to align focus with volunteer commitment
Open Feedback
Q10: What should the PTO keep doing? And what would you suggest the PTO should do better?
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Things that work well:
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Compliments and thank you’s:
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Areas of Opportunity
- Communication has diminished the past few years
- PTO Action Item: The PTO has started sending out a twice monthly 'What's New with the PTO?' email newsletter. This newsletter will give you access to all the events and volunteer opportunities going on in the school. If you are not receiving this email, please make sure your account is Active in Membership Toolkit
- Micro managing, overstaffing events and experienced volunteers taking over makes volunteering less attractive
- PTO Action Item: The PTO is working on more detailed plans for volunteering at events to allow even the newest of volunteers to be able to help with minimal assistance
- Keep parents informed about ways to donate (Amazon Smile, boxtops, etc.)
- Parents Call to Action: Please scroll to the bottom of any 'What's New...' email or to the bottom of our Volunteers page to see all the ways you can donate without even noticing!
- Try to get many more small contributions from more people (money, volunteers)
- PTO Response: This is always a tough one for any PTO. We are always trying to find fun, new ways to recruit not only volunteers, but businesses to donate to our efforts. If you have any ideas on how to improve this process, let us know! We currently send letters and emails during our fundraising periods to try and drum up additional business support.
- Make better use of Facebook (for signups, snack donations, one-stop-shop for all info throughout the year)
- PTO Response: Please take a moment to Like the Bluff Creek Elementary PTO page to get all the latest updates on happenings. We try to put every single thing on the FB page, but of course, this requires a volunteer to be on top of it. If you are someone who is good at setting up that sort of schedule, please let us know!
- Avoid micromanaging when people volunteer
- PTO Response: We are sorry to hear that our amazing volunteers feel micro-managed during their volunteer time. As stated earlier, we are continuing to improve our volunteer communication at events to ensure complete clarity in what your role is.
- Make PTO meetings online accessible (live and/or replay)
- PTO Response: Thanks to distance learning (although we'd rather everyone be in school), we have been introduced into the amazing world of Zoom! As of April, our PTO Meetings will continue to be online for anyone to participate in.
- Try to diversify the people who runs the organizations and events
- PTO Response: Preach it brother or sister who wrote this! We couldn't agree more!! Check out our 2020-2021 Volunteer Opportunities to help us diversify that very group!!
- Know that not all people are willing to ask others for money when raising funds for the school (or with other events like Kids Hearts Challenge)
- PTO Response: We definitely hear you there and do not require every volunteer or parent to be able to go out into the community and ask for money. We know events like Fun Run are a way for your children to ask for pledges from family, but if you choose not to participate, that is ok! We are working on changing up how Fun Run works to remove some of the requirements of 'trinkets' for number of donations and make it more around fundraising for the school.
- Perhaps decrease number of appreciation/conference dinners (as it takes up a lot of time and donations)
- PTO Response: We choose to do Staff Dinners on the later nights of Conferences to support those who are staying late. If we don't do it at this time, our teachers/staff don't get dinner. There are only 4 dinner options every school year (2 at Fall Conferences/2 at Spring Conferences). While we understand the close proximity of the events can be cumbersome for some families, we encourage you to support only those events that work with your schedule as to not overwhelm your efforts.
- Make sure volunteers who signed up have a role and it's clear and organized. Avoid that ‘experienced 'pto-moms take over and ‘overstaffing’
- PTO Response: As stated previously, we are working on cleaning up our Volunteers Roles & Responsibilities to ensure any volunteer, new or tenured, know how to 'man their station'. We definitely are not trying to discourage volunteers from doing their job and ask that you let us know of times in which your experience wasn't great, as soon as you can.
- Be transparent about decisions being made
- PTO Response: We want to be transparent too! Parents are ALWAYS invited to PTO Meetings and encouraged to contact us and Mrs. MacDonald with any questions they may have about events going on at the school. If you have an idea on something we aren't communicating, please let us know so we can improve up on it.
New Ideas
New Ideas:
- Can PTO support educational needs and financial shortfalls due to budget challenges in the district?
- PTO Response: We have been thinking about this as well. Fundraising efforts by our PTO is one of the best ways for us to support some of the shortfalls that come from budget cuts. We know we can't fund a teacher or specialist (as that's a different sent of funds from a district perspective) but we can support materials, field trips, & other educational needs.
- Sell merchandise online
- PTO Response: We couldn't agree more!! Starting this next school year, we will be selling our BCE Spirit Wear online for you to purchase all year long!
- Host/organize more events at school, focus on fun or ways for families/students to connect, possible to let parents pay for it
- PTO Response: While we are always looking for new, exciting ways for families and students to be connected at our events, sometimes we hit a snag by needing volunteers to head up the venture. Any new events or committees that people request would need to be discussed and voted on by the board to ensure they are valuable to all involved. Hopefully these get brought to more of our online PTO Meetings!
- Bring the SuperHero Kids program to BCE
- PTO Response: This sounds fun! Again with new events brought to the school, we need to ensure we have someone(s) in a co-chair capacity to gather all the information and run the event. We also need to look into costs that must be invested to start the program to ensure it fits within the PTO budget. Hopefully the submitter of this idea brings it to our next PTO Meeting to discuss!
- Organize a weekend day fundraiser with roller skating in the Gym (charging admittance, sign waiver, music playlist)
- PTO Response: This also sounds like a fun idea! We can definitely talk to our PE teachers to see their thoughts on this, we know there are 'open gym' opportunities with the Chan Rec Center therefore that can sometime steer people away when there is a free opportunity vs paid. We can look into coinciding this with some sort of 'goal' fundraiser and see how we do. If the submitter of this idea has more information, please bring it to our next PTO Meeting or email us!
- Focus on helping teachers with educational activities that goes beyond curriculum, by providing ‘easy to reach and dedicated’ parent volunteers
- PTO Response: The PTO currently supports all sorts of educational activities requested by our teachers, we provide this with Teacher Grants. Every grade is allocated a certain amount of money (from the PTO) to spend on classroom or grade level materials and on top of that, teachers are able to request additional funds for either their classroom or the entire grade level. These items can range from desk organizers to exercise balls for the students, to online subscriptions for the students to use in and out of the classroom.
- Let’s think of new ways to recruit, because it’s not intimidating at all, probably more people would enjoy involvement
- PTO Response: We are CONSTANTLY thinking of new ways to recruit new volunteers and will take any and all suggestions to do so. Currently we have our 2020-2021 Volunteer Opportunities sign up available for people to check out what all of our options are for the next school year. We also encourage parents and grandparents to check out our Volunteer Committees within the Volunteer tab at the top of the page. The committees are currently separated by categories to help families find their area of expertise that they want to participate in. Most committees have an email address for you to reach out to directly if you have any questions.
- Make a one page summary sheet, listing key events, PTO leadership, resource links, committees
- PTO Response: Great feedback! WE are trying to currently accomplish this with our twice monthly, 'What's New with the PTO?' emails. Hoping to give parents a one stop shop for all of their current needs related to volunteering, events, meetings, and fundraising. If you can't find the email, we have an entire page on this website dedicated to our newsletter so people never have to worry about losing the information needed, check it out! 'What's New with the PTO?'
- PTO Response: Great feedback! WE are trying to currently accomplish this with our twice monthly, 'What's New with the PTO?' emails. Hoping to give parents a one stop shop for all of their current needs related to volunteering, events, meetings, and fundraising. If you can't find the email, we have an entire page on this website dedicated to our newsletter so people never have to worry about losing the information needed, check it out! 'What's New with the PTO?'