MEANINGFUL MEETINGS for Parent Group Board and General Membership

          • Choose the best time of day, best day of the week, and best location to obtain the biggest audience.

• Provide an agenda.

• Use name tags and include the school name.

• Use sign-in sheets with names, addresses, phone numbers, schools, and an opportunity to sign-up to help the parent group in some capacity.

• Make newcomers feel welcome. Assign members to new members and guests.

• The group leader MUST act as a good facilitator or consider bringing in someone to facilitate the meeting. Keep to the agenda. Provide a BIN sheet in which to add questions, comments, further action to take or discuss, but that is not on the agenda.

• Offer refreshments or do a pot-luck lunch, supper, or offer dessert.

• Acknowledge VIPs in the audience.

• Include teachers of the gifted, school board members, and school and district personnel in your invitation list.

• Send a press release announcing your meeting.

• Seek permission to "advertise" the meeting through the school system: their website, administrative bulletins and newsletters, flyers sent out to parents of the gifted via the district's courier system. Some districts actually will do this.

• Consider doing the work of the board/steering committee separate from the public meeting.

• At Steering Committee/Board Meetings, share short reports from different schools about their gifted programs, activities, and ideas.

• Send meeting announcements early and consider developing a calendar of meeting dates early in the year.

• Provide handouts for parents at all meetings (and so note in any publicity for the meeting). Parents love to receive resource information and many will come to a meeting just for that reason. Make sure that this is done even at your Steering Committee/Board Meetings. These parents also need something in return for attending the meeting. Bribery helps.

• Do not get bogged down in personal horror-story telling. Nothing can paralyze the group quicker than to turn each meeting into a gripe session. Do allow an organized way of letting parents let off steam: break into small group discussions with a facilitator and recorder, stay after the meeting to share stories, pass around written surveys, etc. Find ways to hear gripes in an arena that creates ideas for positive action.

• Offer meeting topics of general interest to a large group of parents.

• Be on the lookout for positive parents and tap them for your steering committee or board positions.

• Take simple minutes which explain what was discussed, action taken or to be taken, who is responsible, next meeting dates underlined.

• Mail the unapproved minutes to key people who were not in attendance at the meeting to keep them up to date.

• Write "thank yous" to speakers, presenters, and to anyone helping to host the event.

• Don’t have a meeting just to have a meeting; make it meaningful, or don’t have one.

• If you find parents are not coming to your meetings, try to figure out why: late notices, not getting notice, bad time, poor topic, distant location, just too busy...... Then determine if the meetings are worth the effort or if sharing the information via a newsletter would be an easier way to accomplish your goals.