Parent Volunteers - How do you handle them?

["Jeannine Towler (JJ)" <jjtowler@PEN.K12.VA.US>]

We have a wonderful group of parents at our school.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to contact them all, so
several years ago I decided to have a PVICOPV (i.e. a Parent
Volunteer in Charge of Parent Volunteers).  I give her the list
of parents who have voluntered to help at school and she calls
and arrranges for wahtever help I need.  I have 3-5 parents
who come in a half-day every week to read shelves, stuff
overdue letters, repair books, shelve books,etc.  We also have
special projects.  Last year they scanned my shelves to
identify book that needed to be repaired or discarded. They
pulled the books and I decided what their fate would be.  I had
a box for discards and a cart for the books that my volunteers
would repair.

The first project this year will be to make new spine labels
for books.  I noticed as I was returning 12,000 books to the
shelves after this summer's renovation,that many had badly
faded spine labels. So I have put my old typewriter on a cart
and they will just go shelf by shelf typing labels and putting
them on books.  This method seemed more efficient than pulling
all the books that needed spine labels and then having to return
them to the shelves.

My PVICOPV will also call and arrange the volunteers I will
need for our book fair next month and will find parents next
spring to donate and help serve refreshments at our Young
Readers Party.  I always have all the help I need and only have
to tell my PVICOPV when I will need volunteers and how many!

Hope this helps!
JJ
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