Some thoughts about PTAs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With the benefit of hindsight, I’d never get involved today in PTA the way I was when my kids were in elementary. What a waste of time and effort for nothing that really benefits the actual kids or teachers much at all. I’m almost embarrassed at my own behavior from back then. PTA parents are the worst.

I've never been ultra involved but definitely volunteered and was more involved specifically with the PTA early in my kids' elementary experience. But I didn't enjoy it and did it mostly out of obligation. Then I was talking to another parent one day and she said she virtually never volunteers for PTA activities and doesn't even pay attention to what they are doing. She chaperones field trips when she can, gives money during the annual giving drive, and always checks in with classroom teachers to see if they need supplies. I had not even realized that was an option and it's so smart. It is a way to support the school without touching the PTA nonsense. So that's what I do now and I feel involved and it's like the PTA doesn't exist. Their stuff is nonsense, IMO.

[Anonymous]

Somebody needs to babysit the attention needs of Alpha Mom. If the PTA does not do it, then school staff members are stuck with that extra job. PTA is for handling Alpha Mom, not for helping the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Somebody needs to babysit the attention needs of Alpha Mom. If the PTA does not do it, then school staff members are stuck with that extra job. PTA is for handling Alpha Mom, not for helping the kids.

This is funny because it is sadly true. The problem though is that when you don't understand this coming in as a new parent (who is not Alpha Mom) and one of the first things that happens is that these Alpha Moms start emailing you and talking to you and encouraging you to volunteer. And because they are Alpha Mom, they are aggressive about it and will engage in like military-grade influence tactics to try and push you to volunteer and give money. I didn't get this initially at first and this made me very susceptible to it because I was just a parent of an ECE kid who wanted to do the right thing but didn't necessarily know what I was supposed to do. And the school doesn't say "this is what we look for from parents" or at least ours did.

But the PTA comes at you with 400 emails telling you that they need money and volunteers for XYZ and at least at my school, you get the hard sell. They use all the manipulation tactics of like your worst boss or a nightmare family member -- guilt-tripping, bribery, exclusion, flattery, whatever works. It's actually psychotic but they truly believe they are doing it for "the greater good" so they have no self awareness that when some parent of a Kindergartener gets the 38th email in two weeks explaining that they really need volunteers for Fall Festival and, you know, this event is incredibly important to the school and the kids and teachers really appreciate it (note: it will turn out the kids are somewhat indifferent and the teachers sometimes dislike this stuff but you won't realize that at first, you will take these assertions at face value) and if you don't volunteer then probably they'll have to cancel it and think how badly it would reflect on the current cohort of parents if they were the ones who got the Fall Festival cancelled because they selfishly refused to leave work early to volunteer to run the merchandise table from 4pm-5pm. Humiliating, so you better pony up.

I just want to pull aside every new elementary parent and tell them what I wish I'd heard, which is that this stuff is garbage. Take care of your kid, be polite and supportive to the teachers, make sure your child has what they need for school daily and does their homework where appropriate and is fed and rested and ready to learn. Fall Festival isn't important and please ignore the pleading rants of Alpha Mom who is channeling all the energy of a billionaire CEO in the middle of a hostile takeover bid into a four hour pumpkin sale with a cider station. You owe them nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support? This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.

20 events? Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support? This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.

20 events? Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.

It absolutely is enormous. The problem is that nothing ever comes off the schedule. A few of these are revenue-generating and I get wanting to have maybe 2-3 school-based festival type events throughout the year to give families a chance to be present and facilitate relationships and school spirit. But our school does like 4-5 fundraisers (one really big one and then several more scattered through the year), I think 6 family night type events (think bingo night, international night, literacy night, etc.), a series of "parent socials" where the PTA provides childcare and parents can socialize, and a couple more smaller things. It's a lot but my understanding is that whenever they suggest scaling back, someone says "no we can't stop doing X event, it's a tradition" so they never do.

They never have enough volunteers, the PTA is really overworked, and it's getting hard to recruit people to take on PTA roles because it's such a heavy lift. I know I have no interest. But we also don't attend most of this stuff so I don't feel guilty. We make 3 or 4 of the family nights throughout the year and I'll write a check for the fundraiser but we don't go, and that's it. My acquaintance is the PTA president and I know she is drowning and I feel bad for her but it's clear the problem is they need to streamline and no one is willing to do it.

[Anonymous]

PTA is useless.

What I would like is thoughtful and explicit direction from the teacher on what kids are doing in class and exactly how I can support this at home with specific goals for home.

Something monthly like this:

-Read 20 min a day to your kid and have them read 20 min to you

- memorize times tables if 2,3,4,5.

- lists of spelling words/vocab or spelling rules for that month

-what topics are being explored in science, talk about the water cycle at home, use a rain collector, have child, recorded weather data for a week, etc.


Stuff like this. This is how parents and teachers should be collaborating and supporting one another. Not gifts baskets and parties

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support? This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.

20 events? Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.

It absolutely is enormous. The problem is that nothing ever comes off the schedule. A few of these are revenue-generating and I get wanting to have maybe 2-3 school-based festival type events throughout the year to give families a chance to be present and facilitate relationships and school spirit. But our school does like 4-5 fundraisers (one really big one and then several more scattered through the year), I think 6 family night type events (think bingo night, international night, literacy night, etc.), a series of "parent socials" where the PTA provides childcare and parents can socialize, and a couple more smaller things. It's a lot but my understanding is that whenever they suggest scaling back, someone says "no we can't stop doing X event, it's a tradition" so they never do.

They never have enough volunteers, the PTA is really overworked, and it's getting hard to recruit people to take on PTA roles because it's such a heavy lift. I know I have no interest. But we also don't attend most of this stuff so I don't feel guilty. We make 3 or 4 of the family nights throughout the year and I'll write a check for the fundraiser but we don't go, and that's it. My acquaintance is the PTA president and I know she is drowning and I feel bad for her but it's clear the problem is they need to streamline and no one is willing to do it.

This is how it is at our school too. There’s a Halloween/Fall festival, two Bingo nights, a big spring festival, 2-3 movie nights on the blacktop, a donut/breakfast event, and the school social worker/family liaison separately organizes events without the PTA - International Night and science night usually. Then some years there’s also a kids shopping/holiday market and a spring fun run during the school day, which is separate from the school’s Field Day. There’s also a monthly restaurant fundraiser, and a fall and spring fundraiser.

The thing is all these events are VERY well attended and usually get just enough volunteers to help with, like, day of ticket sales, set up/clean up, concession stand, etc. But the planning is SO MUCH WORK. And either the small PTA board of 4-5 people does all the planning (and also volunteers day of) or they can try to outsource the planning to event-specific planning committees but then you run the risk of those folks dropping the ball on planning since they aren’t as familiar with it. It’s not a good situation either way.

And yes there has been push back from teachers/staff and parents about cutting back on some of the events. Bingo night is the pet event of one of the experienced and well-liked teachers. The fall and spring events bring in a lot of vendors and small businesses from the community who get salty if their DJ company isn’t booked for that random Friday afternoon/evening or if the lady who sells (insert random thing) out of her house isn’t invited to sell at the event she’s been coming to since before Covid. The breakfast event is there to celebrate the military since they do it during April and we have a large number of military-connected families. Etc. etc. It’s really the event planning that is the huge time and effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support? This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.

20 events? Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.

It absolutely is enormous. The problem is that nothing ever comes off the schedule. A few of these are revenue-generating and I get wanting to have maybe 2-3 school-based festival type events throughout the year to give families a chance to be present and facilitate relationships and school spirit. But our school does like 4-5 fundraisers (one really big one and then several more scattered through the year), I think 6 family night type events (think bingo night, international night, literacy night, etc.), a series of "parent socials" where the PTA provides childcare and parents can socialize, and a couple more smaller things. It's a lot but my understanding is that whenever they suggest scaling back, someone says "no we can't stop doing X event, it's a tradition" so they never do.

They never have enough volunteers, the PTA is really overworked, and it's getting hard to recruit people to take on PTA roles because it's such a heavy lift. I know I have no interest. But we also don't attend most of this stuff so I don't feel guilty. We make 3 or 4 of the family nights throughout the year and I'll write a check for the fundraiser but we don't go, and that's it. My acquaintance is the PTA president and I know she is drowning and I feel bad for her but it's clear the problem is they need to streamline and no one is willing to do it.

This is how it is at our school too. There’s a Halloween/Fall festival, two Bingo nights, a big spring festival, 2-3 movie nights on the blacktop, a donut/breakfast event, and the school social worker/family liaison separately organizes events without the PTA - International Night and science night usually. Then some years there’s also a kids shopping/holiday market and a spring fun run during the school day, which is separate from the school’s Field Day. There’s also a monthly restaurant fundraiser, and a fall and spring fundraiser.

The thing is all these events are VERY well attended and usually get just enough volunteers to help with, like, day of ticket sales, set up/clean up, concession stand, etc. But the planning is SO MUCH WORK. And either the small PTA board of 4-5 people does all the planning (and also volunteers day of) or they can try to outsource the planning to event-specific planning committees but then you run the risk of those folks dropping the ball on planning since they aren’t as familiar with it. It’s not a good situation either way.

And yes there has been push back from teachers/staff and parents about cutting back on some of the events. Bingo night is the pet event of one of the experienced and well-liked teachers. The fall and spring events bring in a lot of vendors and small businesses from the community who get salty if their DJ company isn’t booked for that random Friday afternoon/evening or if the lady who sells (insert random thing) out of her house isn’t invited to sell at the event she’s been coming to since before Covid. The breakfast event is there to celebrate the military since they do it during April and we have a large number of military-connected families. Etc. etc. It’s really the event planning that is the huge time and effort.

Your description of the reasons why events can't come off the schedule is just depressing. You have to do a spring festival in perpetuity so some lady who sells crap out of her house can set up a table to sell that crap to school families? What? Except I know exactly what you are talking about because I have experienced this too.

And this is why people nope out on PTA. Especially as women -- many of us were socialized into people pleasing personalities as kids, told it is unkind to say no, and asked to subsume our own needs in order to serve others over and over, and only as we enter our 30s or 40s started to figure out how to stop. And now you want me to dedicate time and energy to an event that is unnecessary, I personally won't enjoy, and that does not in any way contribute to my child's education, just because some random stranger would be upset if the event didn't happen.

No thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With the benefit of hindsight, I’d never get involved today in PTA the way I was when my kids were in elementary. What a waste of time and effort for nothing that really benefits the actual kids or teachers much at all. I’m almost embarrassed at my own behavior from back then. PTA parents are the worst.

I've never been ultra involved but definitely volunteered and was more involved specifically with the PTA early in my kids' elementary experience. But I didn't enjoy it and did it mostly out of obligation. Then I was talking to another parent one day and she said she virtually never volunteers for PTA activities and doesn't even pay attention to what they are doing. She chaperones field trips when she can, gives money during the annual giving drive, and always checks in with classroom teachers to see if they need supplies. I had not even realized that was an option and it's so smart. It is a way to support the school without touching the PTA nonsense. So that's what I do now and I feel involved and it's like the PTA doesn't exist. Their stuff is nonsense, IMO.

I love this idea. I think there are some great things the PTA does but there is also a lot of fluff. A lot of the community doesn't participate in some of the really labor intensive events because people are busy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With the benefit of hindsight, I’d never get involved today in PTA the way I was when my kids were in elementary. What a waste of time and effort for nothing that really benefits the actual kids or teachers much at all. I’m almost embarrassed at my own behavior from back then. PTA parents are the worst.

I've never been ultra involved but definitely volunteered and was more involved specifically with the PTA early in my kids' elementary experience. But I didn't enjoy it and did it mostly out of obligation. Then I was talking to another parent one day and she said she virtually never volunteers for PTA activities and doesn't even pay attention to what they are doing. She chaperones field trips when she can, gives money during the annual giving drive, and always checks in with classroom teachers to see if they need supplies. I had not even realized that was an option and it's so smart. It is a way to support the school without touching the PTA nonsense. So that's what I do now and I feel involved and it's like the PTA doesn't exist. Their stuff is nonsense, IMO.

I love this idea. I think there are some great things the PTA does but there is also a lot of fluff. A lot of the community doesn't participate in some of the really labor intensive events because people are busy.

+2. This is smart. One thing I have realized (thankfully early on) is that nothing is worth any stress that might make the event less enjoyable for my kids. If I'm the only one helping with something, I now just let things go so the week leading up to an event isn't too stressful for me and therefore my family. We are all busy, and I don't begrudge anyone who doesn't help out. But I now give myself permission to just do the best I can without going crazy.

[Anonymous]

Pta = a bunch of Karen's who try to get unfair corruption points by messing with teachers. They know teachers have to mess with the numbers, they know college is expensive, they know people are getting rich suing schools...add it all up you have these Karen's in cahoots with our bosses to get us to give their juvenile (sometime juv dels) extra brownie points, extra percentage boost, extra help, extra fraud, ...or else they will retaliate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pta = a bunch of Karen's who try to get unfair corruption points by messing with teachers. They know teachers have to mess with the numbers, they know college is expensive, they know people are getting rich suing schools...add it all up you have these Karen's in cahoots with our bosses to get us to give their juvenile (sometime juv dels) extra brownie points, extra percentage boost, extra help, extra fraud, ...or else they will retaliate.

Nah. It's not that. The real problem with PTAs is that the meddle and try to tell principals and teachers how to do their jobs.

[Anonymous]

....or else. What...what happens if we don't inflate. What happens if we disregard the karen drama and karen/admin threats to inflate everything. What happens if we dont give an umteenth retake for a better score. I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with greetaliation. Teachers go bye bye from their precious jobs that they need to feed their own kids

[Anonymous]

I am a high school teacher, think my job is demanding and service enough, so never thought twice about not being part of the elementary school PTA. That said, I deeply appreciate the work they did, which was great for kids (and neutral to positive for teachers too). This PTA ran a ton of free or nominal charge after-school classes for students, interest-based fun programming, and the PTA took care of the logistics, supervision, and hiring of teachers, who were mainly the regular teachers getting paid to run these fun interest classes.

At my high school now, the PTA does a nice job bringing in stress relief activities for students during exam week (lawn games, etc.).

The PTA Teacher Appreciation stuff isn't necessary. I appreciate the intentions, but I don't need special snacks or decorations. I need parents in the community to be aware of our working conditions and support us actively when we are in contract negotiations, which have become increasingly difficult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a high school teacher, think my job is demanding and service enough, so never thought twice about not being part of the elementary school PTA. That said, I deeply appreciate the work they did, which was great for kids (and neutral to positive for teachers too). This PTA ran a ton of free or nominal charge after-school classes for students, interest-based fun programming, and the PTA took care of the logistics, supervision, and hiring of teachers, who were mainly the regular teachers getting paid to run these fun interest classes.

At my high school now, the PTA does a nice job bringing in stress relief activities for students during exam week (lawn games, etc.).

The PTA Teacher Appreciation stuff isn't necessary. I appreciate the intentions, but I don't need special snacks or decorations. I need parents in the community to be aware of our working conditions and support us actively when we are in contract negotiations, which have become increasingly difficult.

I'd be excited if our PTA organized free or nominal-cost afterschool activities for kids. I think that would be a real value add. But I offered last year to teach a weekly yoga class for kids after school (I am a certified yoga instructor) and at first they seemed interested and then it just kind of tailed off and I eventually gave up. I wound up teaching a couple classes just to my kids' classes at the teachers' invitation, which was fun.

Our PTA seems more interested in planning events for adults than for kids. I think it's mostly a social outlet for the parents involved. Which is fine, I won't begrudge them that, but it's not my thing.