PTO Meetings

[Anonymous]

That's because you have a PTO and not a PTA.

I disagree. The PTA is a national organization. There are benefits to belonging, but it requires that each school chapter charge membership fees and only members are allowed to vote. There are DCPS PTAs that offer "guest" memberships to parents for whom paying dues would be a hardship. At at least one, a family can pay its own dues and then "sponsor" a membership for another family. Generally, that family has to ASK the school social worker or other appropriate person to get one of those memberships. At many schools, a family has to belong to the PTA for a certain amount of time before the family can vote.

The national organization uses part of the dues money it collects to lobby at both the state and local level for things it thinks are beneficial to public schools.

PTOs aren't part of the national organization and they don't have to charge dues if they don't want to do so. That means that a lot of Title 1 schools have PTOs because a lot of families that qualify for free lunch aren't going to cough up the money for dues. Yeah, it's usually a small amount and most people can afford it, but most poor people are going to pass and then aren't able to vote when there is an issue that's important to them. Many PTOs in schools with a substantial percentage of "at risk" kids don't want to do anything that would discourage their parents from participating. Most of the time, few of their parents do so, but now and again some issue comes up that they are interested in and the PTO doesn't want to create any barriers to participation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is supposed to happen during a PTO meeting…? Ours occur monthly with a guest speaker every month. Never do we discuss what are the needs of the school, fundraising goals, events… we are just told via WhatsApp the “PTO” is holding this fundraiser or hosting this event. All the real stuff happens behind closed doors in an invite only clique that I clearly have not been invited to. I thought a PTO is supposed to be about community, engagement, bringing everyone in… but that is definitely not the case at my dc’s school.

Get involved then. It's not invite only to vollunteer. Join the board, or a committee, give direct feedback to the PTO instead of complaining on an anonymous message board. There are not or giving feedback to please everyone. I'm on the PTA board and without speakers at a meeting no one shows up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's because you have a PTO and not a PTA. PTOs can do whatever they want and it's usually just a club for the rich stay at home mommies to have coffee and chat at 10:00am on weekdays and spend other people's money on things their teacher friends ask for.

What a joke this is. People on the PTO and PTA are working unbelievably hard to run and plan events at your child's school.