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[Elizabeth]

I'm not an expert on this subject but most (if not all rcsd) schools receive a specific amount of money each year by the (?) government to be used for Parent Involvement Activities at school.
What are some things your schools have done?   

[agregoire]

I know ours was used for the annual carnival last year.  Each school needs to apply for it and it is a set $$ amount per student (I cant remember how much).  The proposal needs to outline what it is for and it needs to be used for parental involvement.  I think we are putting ours towards our Montessori Parenting Institute this year.
Interesting and not really pertinant to anyone but our school, but pre-K students do not receive Title 1 money. That eliminates 33 students from our roster !

[Anna]

At 46, the money has been used for a bunch of things: it helps with the costs of our end-of-year picnic and 6th grade & K moving up ceremonies, we've had a family yoga night, brought in a speaker to talk about dealing with tweens, books for kids in Saturday school, it pays for the communication folders every student has for homework . . . I'm sure there's more.
 
The only problem (just in case anyone from the district who can do anything about it is reading this    ) is that getting the money is a nightmare. It's an incredibly tortuous process (multiple forms to be filled in, often the same form more than once) that takes months.  A couple of times the PTA has had to foot the bill for something because vendors are fed up of waiting so long to be paid and then the PTA has to try and get reimbursed. Also, there seems to be no way to get the money early in the school year, which is the best time to really try and do something about parent involvement, which is after all what the money is supposed to be spent on!

[beanqueen]

At the High School level, we have held a couple of workshops
- on math and showing parents how to use the graphing calculator
- on Graduation requirements and Community service 

We have wanted to hold other workshops,  but the NCLB Title 1 process to  pay speakers is so unbearably ungainly and slow that it has been almost impossible to deal with in a timely manner. And we've been told No Way In Heck can we be reimbursed for anything - all purchases HAVE to be made by CO purchasing and ONLY through District-approved vendors, even when we can find it cheaper elsewhere ( example - books for the math workshop)

We have also used a large chunk of the money for postage and mailing costs to send information out to parents - alerting them to Parent Teacher Conferences and other events that the  school can't afford the postage send out.  This year we are trying to be more formal and send a newsletter each marking period. We have an e-mail news service, but only about 1/3 of families are signed up. Not everyone has access to the internet or e-mail at home, and many workplaces don't permit employees to use their work e-mail for personal business.

We purchased pocket folders and labels. We labeled the folders along the lines of  " My Kids School Stuff" and are distributing them, one per family,  at Open House and Parent-Teacher Conference Nights, to help parents have a place to corral their childs' school papers and keep an eye their school life: course curriculum sheets, report cards, calendars, student hand book and phone list, mailings from the district, etc.  The Course Curriculum Sheets are given to each student the first week of class, and distributed at Open House. They outline the course for the year, and project and homework expectations set by each teacher, plus the teacher's contact information. It's really good to keep these, as each teacher has somewhat different rules, but after September or October, they tend to get lost in the shuffle.

To help build a sense of Community, we bought school bumper stickers, one per family.  In High School, it's very challenging to get parents involved. It often feels like the school pushes parents away.  If we can create a sense of community, parents are more likely to pitch in and be engaged.