Volunteer Application, Guidelines, and LMS Partnership

For the safety of our students, anyone entering our campus past the reception area at any time during a school day (8am-3:15pm) must be an approved volunteer. This includes eating lunch with your child (age 3 through grade 6 only), Tuesday morning visits, volunteering during the school day, attending field trips, school events during the school day, etc.

Lakeland Montessori Approved Volunteer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) AND volunteer application links

Guidelines

Lakeland Montessori believes that the school’s partnership with families is a key to student success and to the success of the overall program and will help determine to what degree performance standards will be attained. Active family participation is strongly encouraged. Enrollment is a parent/student cooperative choice, wherein parents/guardians contractually agree to be responsible for their child’s abiding by the rules and regulations applicable to attendance, classroom participation, and behavior. In order to be automatically re-enrolled for the next school year, parents will be required to fulfill the terms of a contract requiring a minimum of 20 hours of volunteer service per year to the School, indicating the manner in which they will become involved in their children’s education and the school’s operations—such as school volunteers, mentoring programs, skills training, special events, and extra-curricular activities. This requirement is per family and can include grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.

Family involvement in school matters is possible at many levels. Parent volunteers are welcomed to participate in the daily life of the school and on various committees. We also invite parents to contribute their knowledge to our educational program through coming to the school to work with small groups for cooking, science experiments, gardening, sewing, and any other special skill you would like to share with the students.

There are four types of volunteers:

At school when the students and staff are present – This requires you to be a LVL 1 approved volunteer.
At school/driving/off campus when students (but no staff) are present – This requires you to be a LVL 2 approved volunteer.
At the school while children are not present – These volunteers may be more comfortable helping the school with clerical work, yard work, gardening, etc. There will also be Saturday work days scheduled for families that would like to help with school projects. Anyone can volunteer, no approval necessary.
At home helpers – Throughout the year help is needed for cutting, folding, sorting, calling, etc. These tasks can be done from home and still count toward meeting your parental volunteer requirement. Anyone can volunteer, no approval necessary.

LMS Partnership

Primary Goals

Establish a Cohesive Family – School Partnership
Facilitate Parent Education and Support

How can a parent or extended family member determine what is needed and volunteer to help?

Many volunteer activities in the school are organized through official school emails or Transparent Classroom posts with various items that we need help with. Classroom volunteering and take-home projects are also organized by the teachers, you can always contact the teacher personally via email in addition to staying current with volunteer opportunity announcements in Transparent Classroom. Teachers may also discuss volunteer opportunities during Parent Class Meetings held four times a year. See the classroom Academic Calendars for specific dates and times.