Best and Worst of PTA events?

[Anonymous]

1. Fall festival and 2. parents night out (fundraiser, kids get to play in the gym, make crafts, watch a movie, have a glow dance party, parents get 3 hours to go out on a Friday night!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many people say, just ask me for one donation at the beginning of the year and cut out all the fundraisers -- and then, I've been at several schools where the PTA does just that, and then maybe 50 families out of 700 donate ANYTHING, and then even those families often only donate $50-$100 (with only few donating a $100). PTA gets about $5000 and that's just not enough to do anything.

So true. One year we asked for 5 bucks per family and around 5 people donated. If every family in our school gave $10 each, we will not need any fundraisers. Strangely, many parents will give their students $30-40 to spend on bookfairs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Fall festival and 2. parents night out (fundraiser, kids get to play in the gym, make crafts, watch a movie, have a glow dance party, parents get 3 hours to go out on a Friday night!).

Another freebie and babysitting service for parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you give examples of things for which your pta has advocated? We don’t do this at all.

Testified for our needs like - more staffing for programs, more security measures in school, newer facilities, updated tech for certain classes. You can advocate for reasonable thing that your school and teacher want. You can advocate for clean water, more notification of use of pesticide, healthier school lunch. PTA is not about bake sales and ice cream socials.

[Anonymous]

We advocated for a more convenient busstop for 7 students. The busstop was 15 minutes away. This was 7 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Fall festival and 2. parents night out (fundraiser, kids get to play in the gym, make crafts, watch a movie, have a glow dance party, parents get 3 hours to go out on a Friday night!).

Another freebie and babysitting service for parents.

It's not free. Parents PAY for this service. We did it, and it raised a ton of money. Parents loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Fall festival and 2. parents night out (fundraiser, kids get to play in the gym, make crafts, watch a movie, have a glow dance party, parents get 3 hours to go out on a Friday night!).

Another freebie and babysitting service for parents.

It's not free. Parents PAY for this service. We did it, and it raised a ton of money. Parents loved it.

That's wonderful. How much did you spend/make and how much was charged for each child? How large is your school and how many kids attended?

[Anonymous]

The book fair always seemed like a ripoff. I imagine if the school charges $8/book they might get 10% of that. I'd rather give $8 to the PTA and not buy overpriced books from Scholastic.

[Anonymous]

PTA treasurer here again. Another point on throwing good events and making money is to carefully select and manage your volunteers.

Some parents have no business sense and spend/waste way too much on events. I was shocked at the parents who expected a big cushy budget to buy tons of high end balloons, decorations, give aways, pay performers, give all volunteers a take away gift and then never factored in how many people might buy something or what price they were setting. Some of the traditional biggest fundraisers in the hands of a "shopper with no business sense" become break even at best or money losers. Avoid the parents who expect the event to be on par with their daughters wedding. Don't assume that your event chair understands the concept of a fundraiser. I guarantee you that elementary age kids are not looking at the quality of the table coverings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The book fair always seemed like a ripoff. I imagine if the school charges $8/book they might get 10% of that. I'd rather give $8 to the PTA and not buy overpriced books from Scholastic.

In our school, Scholastic gives us 25% of the sales. How come you find scholastic to be expensive? Most books are less than $10. We carry a whole boatload of books that are for 1-5 dollars. There is however a threshold of sales we have to meet. We are a school of poor students and they LOVE the bookfair.

I am sure your PTA would love to get $8 from you and not care if you do not buy the books. As long as you can give the money the PTA is fine. In most of the affluent schools all parents write a check for $100-150 for the PTA and then they do not have to buy anything else. If you can give the money directly to the PTA, the volunteers will be more than happy because they won't have to do any work for fundraisers.

You should always give money to the PTA. They appreciate it a lot.

[Anonymous]

Former PTA President. Our Scholastic book fairs (we had 2, fall and spring), raised over $30k for the school, at no cost to the school. You make it a social thing (kids come in their PJs from 7:00-8:15, teachers rotate through reading books), and the kids love it! Plus, older kids get to practice math skills when it's not too busy - that's going to cost $12.42, and you gave me $12.50, or $15.00, how much change should ypu get back? Parents also like to buy books frim the wishlist created by their child's teacher for their classroom.

Not sure why all the hate over books that encourage kids to read! Again, no one forces you buy the books. You think it's too expensive, skip it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Former PTA President. Our Scholastic book fairs (we had 2, fall and spring), raised over $30k for the school, at no cost to the school. You make it a social thing (kids come in their PJs from 7:00-8:15, teachers rotate through reading books), and the kids love it! Plus, older kids get to practice math skills when it's not too busy - that's going to cost $12.42, and you gave me $12.50, or $15.00, how much change should ypu get back? Parents also like to buy books frim the wishlist created by their child's teacher for their classroom.

Not sure why all the hate over books that encourage kids to read! Again, no one forces you buy the books. You think it's too expensive, skip it!

Agreed. PTA pres here at a Focus school and our fall and spring book fairs are our biggest money makers.

[Anonymous]

Former PTA President. Our Scholastic book fairs (we had 2, fall and spring), raised over $30k for the school, at no cost to the school. You make it a social thing (kids come in their PJs from 7:00-8:15, teachers rotate through reading books), and the kids love it! Plus, older kids get to practice math skills when it's not too busy - that's going to cost $12.42, and you gave me $12.50, or $15.00, how much change should ypu get back? Parents also like to buy books frim the wishlist created by their child's teacher for their classroom.

Not sure why all the hate over books that encourage kids to read! Again, no one forces you buy the books. You think it's too expensive, skip it!

Ugh..spoken like a true book fair groupie mom. The school always has a handle of moms that love this stuff while everyone else hates it. My favorite is the comment at "no cost". You spent 60+ hours of volunteer time making money for scholastic and feeling important about your big book fair job. You blocked out the media center for a week.

You claim it inspires reading BUT the merchandise from Scholastic has been significantly shifting to toys, pens and other crap. The books are not good quality but the fun yet crappy ones like Diary of Wimpy kid etc. They'll throw in one or two good titles but overall its pretty mediocre to bad. Book fairs are not about literacy anymore than Boosterthon is about health. Its just not. The teachers don't love taking time out of class to take the kids to book fair. Do the kids love buying a cute eraser and pencil sharpener. Of course, they do! They would also love an arcade to unlimited ice cream.

From a $$ perspective, many, many parents are only purchasing things from your fair because the kids are begging, don't want to be left out or they don't know that 75% goes back to Scholastic. For the quality of books sold at Scholastic, many would much prefer to just get those at the library.

Our school did a donation drive for used kids books and then sold them for $1 at the school carnival. This made a lot of money that 100% went back to the school. Since all books were $1, the poorer kids weren't stuck buying the 1-2 titles prices at $2 that Scholastic begrudgingly provides. They don't see their richer friends walking away with the expensive hard cover books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Former PTA President. Our Scholastic book fairs (we had 2, fall and spring), raised over $30k for the school, at no cost to the school. You make it a social thing (kids come in their PJs from 7:00-8:15, teachers rotate through reading books), and the kids love it! Plus, older kids get to practice math skills when it's not too busy - that's going to cost $12.42, and you gave me $12.50, or $15.00, how much change should ypu get back? Parents also like to buy books frim the wishlist created by their child's teacher for their classroom.

Not sure why all the hate over books that encourage kids to read! Again, no one forces you buy the books. You think it's too expensive, skip it!

Ugh..spoken like a true book fair groupie mom. The school always has a handle of moms that love this stuff while everyone else hates it. My favorite is the comment at "no cost". You spent 60+ hours of volunteer time making money for scholastic and feeling important about your big book fair job. You blocked out the media center for a week.

You claim it inspires reading BUT the merchandise from Scholastic has been significantly shifting to toys, pens and other crap. The books are not good quality but the fun yet crappy ones like Diary of Wimpy kid etc. They'll throw in one or two good titles but overall its pretty mediocre to bad. Book fairs are not about literacy anymore than Boosterthon is about health. Its just not. The teachers don't love taking time out of class to take the kids to book fair. Do the kids love buying a cute eraser and pencil sharpener. Of course, they do! They would also love an arcade to unlimited ice cream.

From a $$ perspective, many, many parents are only purchasing things from your fair because the kids are begging, don't want to be left out or they don't know that 75% goes back to Scholastic. For the quality of books sold at Scholastic, many would much prefer to just get those at the library.

Our school did a donation drive for used kids books and then sold them for $1 at the school carnival. This made a lot of money that 100% went back to the school. Since all books were $1, the poorer kids weren't stuck buying the 1-2 titles prices at $2 that Scholastic begrudgingly provides. They don't see their richer friends walking away with the expensive hard cover books.

+100!

HATE the Scholastic book fairs. Agree that it's crappy that the kids don't get media for two weeks a year since the book fair takes over, and the kids can only go if they want to shop. Agree completely that SO many of the books are just CRAP. Enough with the Shopkins 'books' that are really not even books. I'm not a literary snob by any means, but I feel like 60% of the Scholastic options are junk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Former PTA President. Our Scholastic book fairs (we had 2, fall and spring), raised over $30k for the school, at no cost to the school. You make it a social thing (kids come in their PJs from 7:00-8:15, teachers rotate through reading books), and the kids love it! Plus, older kids get to practice math skills when it's not too busy - that's going to cost $12.42, and you gave me $12.50, or $15.00, how much change should ypu get back? Parents also like to buy books frim the wishlist created by their child's teacher for their classroom.

Not sure why all the hate over books that encourage kids to read! Again, no one forces you buy the books. You think it's too expensive, skip it!

Ugh..spoken like a true book fair groupie mom. The school always has a handle of moms that love this stuff while everyone else hates it. My favorite is the comment at "no cost". You spent 60+ hours of volunteer time making money for scholastic and feeling important about your big book fair job. You blocked out the media center for a week.

You claim it inspires reading BUT the merchandise from Scholastic has been significantly shifting to toys, pens and other crap. The books are not good quality but the fun yet crappy ones like Diary of Wimpy kid etc. They'll throw in one or two good titles but overall its pretty mediocre to bad. Book fairs are not about literacy anymore than Boosterthon is about health. Its just not. The teachers don't love taking time out of class to take the kids to book fair. Do the kids love buying a cute eraser and pencil sharpener. Of course, they do! They would also love an arcade to unlimited ice cream.

From a $$ perspective, many, many parents are only purchasing things from your fair because the kids are begging, don't want to be left out or they don't know that 75% goes back to Scholastic. For the quality of books sold at Scholastic, many would much prefer to just get those at the library.

Our school did a donation drive for used kids books and then sold them for $1 at the school carnival. This made a lot of money that 100% went back to the school. Since all books were $1, the poorer kids weren't stuck buying the 1-2 titles prices at $2 that Scholastic begrudgingly provides. They don't see their richer friends walking away with the expensive hard cover books.

DP. You know, you can make your point without being a jerk. Does it make you feel good to put down someone who is dedicating their time to help with the PTA?