PTSA membership has lowered significantly from last year, and about 50 percent of what it used to be, leading to a lower budget.

The low membership is a huge change for the CHS PTSA, which won an award for having the most members in the state last year.

“We feel it’s a very integral part of the school,” Principal Joan Benz said. “It’s a real surprise that membership is lower.”

According to PTSA president Geri Shapiro, last year the PTSA paid a fee to distribute CHS Blips, the one-way e-mail system containing information about CHS events. This year, they started distributing Blips through Yahoo Groups, a free service. She believes the change has contributed to a lower membership, since not everyone receives e-mails.

“Blips was costing us $20 a month,” Shapiro said. “That’s just more money we could be spending on teachers and students.”

Another change is that the PTSA went paperless this year. Previously, membership forms were mailed out to parents, but this year, only a postcard was sent out to remind parents to sign up.

Parents then had to go online and print out the membership forms themselves. CHS parent Gail Allen has always joined the PTSA, but because of the changes this year, like many parents, she forgot to sign up.

“I just assumed that I had signed up the way I had been doing it for years,” Allen said. “I thought I had signed up, but when I learned it was online, I realized I definitely hadn’t.”

According to membership chair Veronica Espinoza, parents forgetting to sign up is a major factor in the drop in membership.

“People are used to getting the form in the mail,” Espinoza said. “They forget if they’ve signed up or not.”

CHS is not the only school whose membership dropped after not mailing out forms. According to Montgomery County Council PTA membership chair Janette Gilman, two other schools that did not do summer mailings saw their membership drop 50 percent.

“A mailing allows you to share with your school community what your PTSA does for your students and school,” Gilman said. “It gives parents a form that is part of the back-to-school routine.”

The PTSA’s budget is comprised solely of membership fees, so this large drop in membership significantly affects the budget. The membership fees collected this year will make up the budget for the 2012-2013 school year. The PTSA regularly pays for various school events, including the freshman picnic, senior breakfast and the CHS directory.

“If there are special projects a class has, they can petition for something from the PTSA,” Benz said. “They are the go-to organization if we need something. If they don’t have high membership, they won’t be able to do things they traditionally use for students.”

According to Shapiro, if membership doesn’t return to normal, the PTSA will have to cut some programs.

“Your $40 membership fee that you pay goes a long way,” Shapiro said. “The students get the money back in so many ways.”

Although the PTSA has gotten off to a slow start, it hopes to increase the number of members. It added a link to the online membership form onto Blips and passed out the address to sign up at the freshman meeting.

“All these little things add up,” Espinoza said. “We’re getting more members, but slowly.”