To address both the lack of parent volunteers/involvement and the overwhelming duties that teacher's have, below is my idea.
Approach and gain agreement with medium-to-large corporations (>500) to allow parents (and non-parents if interested) to volunteer at their local school 1 day a quarter without using accrued (personal) time. This does not exclusively mean volunteering in your child's class, but utilizing an available resource anywhere in the school or other classrooms for tasks that might need extra hands. Some larger corporations (ex. Wachovia) already allow employees to volunteer a certain amount of time at a non-profit organization...why not extend that premise to schools?
Why:
1. It will allow parents the ability to get more involved without repercussions.
2. It could provide an “almost daily” extra set of hands to help out in the school. For example, in my current children’s school of 561 students, assume 33% of parents have more than one kid in the school. That leaves 376 families, if only 1 parent volunteered, in 180 school days. That’s approx 2 extra people per day to help with grading papers, special event setup, field trips, cleanup, painting, etc.
3. By approaching only larger corporations of >500 employees, the company workflow doesn’t suffer by afford up to 10-15% of their work population volunteering in a given day.
How:
1. A simple, universal ‘school volunteering’ sheet provided to schools which will be signed and returned to corporate HR/personnel.
2. Teachers submit requests to the school office and are assigned their resources based on a first come, first served basis. The assignments, too, are allotted to teachers on a first come, first served basis.