Volunteering at the Charter School may not always be sunshine and happy faces.  Getting to the school on time, working with the students, scheduling the time, feeling useful, communicating needs and responsibilities can be challenging and at times stressful.  So why do we expect families to be involved and volunteer at the school?  The APC along with all of the classroom coordinators and a few additional Charter School parents met Wednesday night to discuss volunteerism at the school.   We started by reading the Charter School vision.  We then spent some time listing our goals for family volunteerism.  It  was evident right away that there are numerous benefits with having family involvement in the classrooms and around the school, benefits not only for the students and the teachers, but also for the staff, the family volunteers and the entire school community.  The list reminded all of us that volunteerism is essential to our school if we are going to stay true to our school philosophy and vision. 

How can we improve all aspects of volunteerism at the Charter School?  What is working and what isn’t working? We discussed many areas that need improvement in regards to volunteering at the Charter School including communication, training, guidance, expectations, job descriptions and procedures.  It was easy to make a list of the things that we need or could do better. The difficult part now is putting these ideas into place.  A Volunteer Committee is forming to oversee all of the improvements we would like to make to “grow volunteering” at the school.  Please consider being on this committee or any of the sub-committees that may develop.   An example of a sub-committee might be looking at training.  Who needs training? How is it going to be conducted? When is the training going to occur?  Are there any manuals or procedures that need to be created? 
We are also going to update family job descriptions, so you may be contacted to help with this process.   Think about what you do for your family job and what information you might offer to someone who may take on that job in the future.   If we spend the time now, reviewing, revising, reassessing, we will spend less time reinventing the wheel in the future.  Our goal is to make volunteering at the school a positive  experience for everyone.

**Notes from the Wednesday, January 25th meeting will be posted across from the office.  I highly recommend that you read them and feel free to contact an APC member with any of your comments. THANK YOU to everyone that attended the meeting!!