PTA and parent group meetings are constrained by the school calendar and by childcare, which means the viable slots are narrow and largely predictable: straight after drop-off, or an evening after bedtime. Propose dates inside those windows across a term, and use a poll that needs no account, since parent groups always include people who will not make one.
There are only two windows
Just after drop-off, or after about 19:30. Everything in between is unavailable to most of the group, and offering it produces a lot of noes that tell you nothing you did not already know.
Offer both windows in the same poll. They usually catch different halves of the committee, and knowing which half is bigger is genuinely useful.
What to work around
- Term dates and half terms, first and non-negotiable.
- Parents evenings, plays and sports days, which take the whole week around them.
- Whether the school building is available, which often decides the day for you.
- Anyone who needs to join remotely, which turns some noes into yeses.
- A whole term at once, so this happens once rather than six times.
Reaching everyone
Send the link through the school's channel and the class chat, and put the poll's short code on anything printed. Parent groups are the classic case of a list spread across three systems, none of which reaches everybody, and a link that needs no account survives being forwarded through all of them.
Common questions
- Can I schedule a whole term at once?
- Yes. Up to 20 dates in one poll covers a term of meetings with alternatives.
- Do parents need an account?
- No, and requiring an email address can be switched off too.
- Can teachers and parents both answer the same poll?
- Yes. It is one link and there is no distinction between kinds of participant.
Ready when you are
Clubs, teams and communities
The recurring ones: a fixed cast, a moving date, and someone who has to ask every time.
Related
- Committee meeting scheduling Committees run on goodwill and evenings. Propose the dates, let everyone mark them, and pick the one that keeps the most members in the room.
- Church group scheduling A group that spans every age and every level of comfort with technology. One link, three taps, no account, and a code that can be read out loud.
- A WhenIsGood alternative A group date poll built around the people answering rather than the person asking: three taps, no account, and the option to answer from the invitation email.
Read next
- How to schedule a meeting with a group A short, practical method for getting a group of people onto one date: how many options to offer, how far ahead to ask, and how to close it out.
Or see everything we have written in one list.