Last updated by Kasey Murphy on 01/25/2023

Most schools of younger children have a pretty big job when it comes to volunteering time for school. Not just with student volunteers but also with parent volunteers. 

Parent engagement is essential to schools to showcase an involvement in their school and build a sense of community. When schools feel more like a community and more involved, students tend to be more engaged, and it is a great role model for them to watch their parents volunteer and engage in school activities. 

Sometimes, parents can be really tough to convince to participate in school activities. Some schools even have parent commitment hours, and schools track parent involvement and engagement within the school. 

Whatever the severity of your school is when it comes to parent engagement and parent volunteering - you need a simple and easy way to know which parents are participating and which are not, and to have reliable data to support any questioning that might come from parents about their commitment level. 

What Is A Parent Tracking Program? 

A parent tracking program is a set process dedicated to managing and tracking parent involvement and parent volunteering in a school. A Parent Tracking Program can be used within individual schools and classes, for PTA commitment and parent volunteering, or for Charter School Parent Commitment hours. 

Why is parent tracking important? 

Parent tracking important for a few reasons. The priority or primary purpose of parent tracking may differ depending on your educational institution’s vision and mission with parent involvement and parent volunteering. 

But the main reason that parent involvement is important is that there are many studies connecting parent involvement to student achievement and success. When parents are involved with the school, teaching, and the community, it encourages students to do the same, which leads to a better-rounded student and individual for the future! 

So, the best way to check in on your student’s progress, beyond talking to the student face-to-face, would be to check in with parents and encourage them to be involved in volunteering or events around the school. Parent involvement can be an additional metric to track to help ensure student success, and it can be very easily implemented with a parent tracking program. 

Having an automated software and parental tracking program will help schools easily and quickly evaluate student and parent involvement. A very easy way that schools can implement parent tracking is through parent sign up forms.

If you aren’t sure about parent involvement or parent tracking, read more about parental involvement and the studies that back up these statements.

What Is A Parent Volunteer Sign-Up Program?

A parent volunteer sign-up program is software that allows parents to sign up for PTA shifts, parent volunteering, or any sort of parent involvement activity that your school has implemented. Then, when your parents have signed up, their time can be tracked to see how much time they put into an event. Schools can then run a report to see which parents have been putting in the time to help the school and students. 

There are different ways to set up and use a parent volunteer sign-up program. If you use a good software program, like Track It Forward, you should be able to use different features to best fit the layout of your school parent involvement program. 

For example, with Track It Forward : 

• Parents can sign up for events or shifts through an event calendar, then school admins can verify their attendance to log their hours.

• Or, parents can use Track It Forward’s check in kiosk to check in and out of events and log their time. 

• Then, administrators of the parent involvement program can pull reports and see how much time parents are committing to the school. 

• You can even separate different events into categories like PTA, extracurricular activities, school improvement, or community service events and parent volunteer hours.

 How does a Parent Volunteer Sign-Up Program Help Schools?  

A parent volunteer sign-up program will do all the work for school administrators when it comes to parent involvement in the school. Once it is set up, it basically runs itself until you need to run a report. 

Schools can focus on teaching and running programs rather than trying to wrangle parents and ask them how much time they can commit to certain projects. 

Avoid Drama With Parent Engagement By Using Parent Tracking Software 

In addition, if you have programs like PTA or service projects that are parent-run, there does not have to be one “bad guy” that states that it seems like Parent A is not volunteering as much. It can simply be a reminder placed within the volunteer sign-up program! 

If you are looking to implement a parent volunteer sign-up system or a parent tracking system, download our guide to fully see the benefits!