Why do so many SAHMs insist on PTA or activity meetings during the school day?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my kids’ elementary, they tried evening meetings and not many came. They switched meetings to 8AM (school start time of 8AM) and had much better attendance. Working parents who wanted to attend would just start work late that day, and most SAHPs preferred it. They also live-streamed the meetings.

I didn’t have any say in scheduling, just saying how it worked at our school.

+1. This is how our school does it too. Working moms who have the bandwidth to volunteer with the PTA usually also have the flexibility to start work at 9:30am one day a month.

This reflects a selection bias. Another way to express the same data is that you are only interested in working mothers whose jobs afford them the flexibility to arrive at work at 9:30– no shift workers, no care workers, no one with international calls etc.

And so, anyone who falls into that category should correctly conclude that you’re not interested in them and not take the PTA requests particularly seriously.

Have you been to a PTA meeting? I haven’t attended one in 3 years. I still volunteer as needed on an ad-hoc basis. What more does anyone really need? This focus on the PTA meeting time is a distraction.

If you want to volunteer for activities that are chosen without your input that’s great. I don’t like my time dictated by committees I don’t participate in.

You’re probably not really cut out for being a PTA volunteer anyway. Everyone wants to be a decision maker, nobody really wants to do the grunt work.

Your idea of a PTA volunteer as someone who does grunt work and has no input is suggestive as to why you’re struggling to find volunteers.

PTA board member here. I would LOVE if I could find volunteers who did decision making! I am tired of making all the decisions and would love if someone just took charge and planned something!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here. Here’s one other thing that I don’t think I have seen mentioned in this discussion, regarding the meeting time. There is a T in PTA. Granted, it’s rare for us to have teachers attend our PTA meetings, but we do value their participation in PTA and encourage them to come to meetings and events. In addition, we happen to have a number of teachers in our building who are also parents of students in our building, and they are valued PTA members. If we hold a meeting during the day, it would send a message that we don’t want them there.

You think the teachers want to stay late, or even worse, come BACK to school after they’ve gone home for the day? Ha!

[Anonymous]

I wish PTA would disappear and parents would just put their time and energy into educating their child at home in the areas they need help, volunteering to tutor at the school, and working on the behavior of their own kids. Schools would be 10000x better of this happened, even if there wasn’t a single assembly or field trip (where no one learns anything, anyhow).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here. Here’s one other thing that I don’t think I have seen mentioned in this discussion, regarding the meeting time. There is a T in PTA. Granted, it’s rare for us to have teachers attend our PTA meetings, but we do value their participation in PTA and encourage them to come to meetings and events. In addition, we happen to have a number of teachers in our building who are also parents of students in our building, and they are valued PTA members. If we hold a meeting during the day, it would send a message that we don’t want them there.

You think the teachers want to stay late, or even worse, come BACK to school after they’ve gone home for the day? Ha!

+1 no teachers ever come to these meetings. That have too much to do and plenty of other meetings that are actually important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish PTA would disappear and parents would just put their time and energy into educating their child at home in the areas they need help, volunteering to tutor at the school, and working on the behavior of their own kids. Schools would be 10000x better of this happened, even if there wasn’t a single assembly or field trip (where no one learns anything, anyhow).

Why can't we do both? I am on the PTA and work with my own kids and help others. Why do people hate PTAs so much? During the pandemic our PTA provided a weekly food pantry that supplied food to almost 100 families. We provide coats and warm clothing during the winter and we provide holiday dinners and gifts. This year we able to donate Spanish early readers to our younger grades. WE also provide teacher grants and yes we do fun activities for kids and appreciation for teachers.

But I don't get why there is such hate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish PTA would disappear and parents would just put their time and energy into educating their child at home in the areas they need help, volunteering to tutor at the school, and working on the behavior of their own kids. Schools would be 10000x better of this happened, even if there wasn’t a single assembly or field trip (where no one learns anything, anyhow).

Why can't we do both? I am on the PTA and work with my own kids and help others. Why do people hate PTAs so much? During the pandemic our PTA provided a weekly food pantry that supplied food to almost 100 families. We provide coats and warm clothing during the winter and we provide holiday dinners and gifts. This year we able to donate Spanish early readers to our younger grades. WE also provide teacher grants and yes we do fun activities for kids and appreciation for teachers.

But I don't get why there is such hate.

Because it’s so much excess. Areas with super active PTAs are already wealthy. Certainly no one is starving. Nobody needs your charity work at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our PTA has a board that meets at least every month during the school day, but they also have open meetings twice a year whose entire purpose is to let the community know what is going on and invite them to participate in activities. I find it especially frustrating that they only have these meetings during the school day when a large portion of families have one or two working parents. I would LOVE to attend these meetings. I donate, I volunteer when I can, but I think it's important for families to know what is happening with the money that they are donating, so I really don't think it's too much to ask that they either do these meetings in the evenings so more people can attend or that they hold them over zoom. No decisions are being made, it's purely informative and supposedly community building.

Interesting how all the PTA moms are just choosing to ignore this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my kids’ elementary, they tried evening meetings and not many came. They switched meetings to 8AM (school start time of 8AM) and had much better attendance. Working parents who wanted to attend would just start work late that day, and most SAHPs preferred it. They also live-streamed the meetings.

I didn’t have any say in scheduling, just saying how it worked at our school.

+1. This is how our school does it too. Working moms who have the bandwidth to volunteer with the PTA usually also have the flexibility to start work at 9:30am one day a month.

This reflects a selection bias. Another way to express the same data is that you are only interested in working mothers whose jobs afford them the flexibility to arrive at work at 9:30– no shift workers, no care workers, no one with international calls etc.

And so, anyone who falls into that category should correctly conclude that you’re not interested in them and not take the PTA requests particularly seriously.

Have you been to a PTA meeting? I haven’t attended one in 3 years. I still volunteer as needed on an ad-hoc basis. What more does anyone really need? This focus on the PTA meeting time is a distraction.

If you want to volunteer for activities that are chosen without your input that’s great. I don’t like my time dictated by committees I don’t participate in.

You’re probably not really cut out for being a PTA volunteer anyway. Everyone wants to be a decision maker, nobody really wants to do the grunt work.

Your idea of a PTA volunteer as someone who does grunt work and has no input is suggestive as to why you’re struggling to find volunteers.

PTA board member here. I would LOVE if I could find volunteers who did decision making! I am tired of making all the decisions and would love if someone just took charge and planned something!

Other than budget I cannot remember a decision that was actually made at our PTA meetings. They were typically intended as informative. Everything else was pretty much pre-decided to be what it had always been and planned via email. New things were started because someone cared and stepped up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish PTA would disappear and parents would just put their time and energy into educating their child at home in the areas they need help, volunteering to tutor at the school, and working on the behavior of their own kids. Schools would be 10000x better of this happened, even if there wasn’t a single assembly or field trip (where no one learns anything, anyhow).

Why can't we do both? I am on the PTA and work with my own kids and help others. Why do people hate PTAs so much? During the pandemic our PTA provided a weekly food pantry that supplied food to almost 100 families. We provide coats and warm clothing during the winter and we provide holiday dinners and gifts. This year we able to donate Spanish early readers to our younger grades. WE also provide teacher grants and yes we do fun activities for kids and appreciation for teachers.

But I don't get why there is such hate.

Because it’s so much excess. Areas with super active PTAs are already wealthy. Certainly no one is starving. Nobody needs your charity work at school.

We are a Title I school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my kids’ elementary, they tried evening meetings and not many came. They switched meetings to 8AM (school start time of 8AM) and had much better attendance. Working parents who wanted to attend would just start work late that day, and most SAHPs preferred it. They also live-streamed the meetings.

I didn’t have any say in scheduling, just saying how it worked at our school.

+1. This is how our school does it too. Working moms who have the bandwidth to volunteer with the PTA usually also have the flexibility to start work at 9:30am one day a month.

This reflects a selection bias. Another way to express the same data is that you are only interested in working mothers whose jobs afford them the flexibility to arrive at work at 9:30– no shift workers, no care workers, no one with international calls etc.

And so, anyone who falls into that category should correctly conclude that you’re not interested in them and not take the PTA requests particularly seriously.

Have you been to a PTA meeting? I haven’t attended one in 3 years. I still volunteer as needed on an ad-hoc basis. What more does anyone really need? This focus on the PTA meeting time is a distraction.

If you want to volunteer for activities that are chosen without your input that’s great. I don’t like my time dictated by committees I don’t participate in.

You’re probably not really cut out for being a PTA volunteer anyway. Everyone wants to be a decision maker, nobody really wants to do the grunt work.

Your idea of a PTA volunteer as someone who does grunt work and has no input is suggestive as to why you’re struggling to find volunteers.

PTA board member here. I would LOVE if I could find volunteers who did decision making! I am tired of making all the decisions and would love if someone just took charge and planned something!

Other than budget I cannot remember a decision that was actually made at our PTA meetings. They were typically intended as informative. Everything else was pretty much pre-decided to be what it had always been and planned via email. New things were started because someone cared and stepped up.

You are right we don't make decisions at PTA meetings. They are more informative (we tend to have guest speakers). But we send out request for volunteers asking if folks want to chair committees and rarely get volunteers for those roles. We do get a fair amount of volunteers for the grunt work stuff, but people don't generally want to plan events. Which is fine, its a lot of work and I totally get it. But I would love if someone wanted to :)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our PTA has a board that meets at least every month during the school day, but they also have open meetings twice a year whose entire purpose is to let the community know what is going on and invite them to participate in activities. I find it especially frustrating that they only have these meetings during the school day when a large portion of families have one or two working parents. I would LOVE to attend these meetings. I donate, I volunteer when I can, but I think it's important for families to know what is happening with the money that they are donating, so I really don't think it's too much to ask that they either do these meetings in the evenings so more people can attend or that they hold them over zoom. No decisions are being made, it's purely informative and supposedly community building.

Interesting how all the PTA moms are just choosing to ignore this post.

I don't know that we are ignoring it. The PTAs i am on have meetings at night. I agree that meetings shouldn't be during the day? We are having our budget meeting tomorrow in the evening and I post the budget on our website for everyone to see so they can see how we spend money.

I mentioned earlier why zoom meetings are hard for us. We like having some in person so its community building (we provide food and daycare). Hybrid can be difficulty because we don't have the proper video equipment (sounds quality is always something we struggle with), and it is harder to provide translators for video meetings (technology wise).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish PTA would disappear and parents would just put their time and energy into educating their child at home in the areas they need help, volunteering to tutor at the school, and working on the behavior of their own kids. Schools would be 10000x better of this happened, even if there wasn’t a single assembly or field trip (where no one learns anything, anyhow).

Why can't we do both? I am on the PTA and work with my own kids and help others. Why do people hate PTAs so much? During the pandemic our PTA provided a weekly food pantry that supplied food to almost 100 families. We provide coats and warm clothing during the winter and we provide holiday dinners and gifts. This year we able to donate Spanish early readers to our younger grades. WE also provide teacher grants and yes we do fun activities for kids and appreciation for teachers.

But I don't get why there is such hate.

Because it’s so much excess. Areas with super active PTAs are already wealthy. Certainly no one is starving. Nobody needs your charity work at school.

We are a Title I school.

Probably with a high obesity rate too. Lack of education is the biggest problem, not lack of food. Majority of kids aren’t even at grade level, especially in title 1 districts. And not for a lack of food..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish PTA would disappear and parents would just put their time and energy into educating their child at home in the areas they need help, volunteering to tutor at the school, and working on the behavior of their own kids. Schools would be 10000x better of this happened, even if there wasn’t a single assembly or field trip (where no one learns anything, anyhow).

Why can't we do both? I am on the PTA and work with my own kids and help others. Why do people hate PTAs so much? During the pandemic our PTA provided a weekly food pantry that supplied food to almost 100 families. We provide coats and warm clothing during the winter and we provide holiday dinners and gifts. This year we able to donate Spanish early readers to our younger grades. WE also provide teacher grants and yes we do fun activities for kids and appreciation for teachers.

But I don't get why there is such hate.

Because it’s so much excess. Areas with super active PTAs are already wealthy. Certainly no one is starving. Nobody needs your charity work at school.

We are a Title I school.

Probably with a high obesity rate too. Lack of education is the biggest problem, not lack of food. Majority of kids aren’t even at grade level, especially in title 1 districts. And not for a lack of food..

I don't notice that....

But we did move our science score from 60% passing to nearly 90% passing. But I understand that you just want to be rude and annoying and not have an actual conversation. It also may surprise you to know that the PTA is not in charge of curriculum or actually teaching classes.