PTA charging for events
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Anonymous
You don’t need to pay insurance per event but the pta needs to pay insurance for the year. And events like this may be part of the overall fundraising goal to help cover those costs. PTAs do not make a lot on dues on the individual school level. Most of that gets rolled up into national, state and county PTA dues. So they still need other ways to make money over the length of the year. |
Anonymous
You clearly are not involved with PTA. PTA has to pay insurance, not mcps to host. |
Anonymous
Good luck finding a time that does not conflict with testing, instructional time, or any other in-school event. Navigating the school calendar is actually really challenging, because each grade has a variety of mandatory tests, teachers may or may not be available to supervise, and at this time of year they are pushing to get through content before end of year assessments. Is your child very young, or are you just new to public education in general? You seem to have this idea that there is one easy trick that no one has thought of before, but I promise that someone has thought of it and there's a good reason they are doing things the way they are. |
Anonymous
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I’m thinking back on our elementary school PTA days and our PTA many free community events. They also ran spring fairs, bingo nights and talent shows that did require some kind of payment. Showing up to the spring fair was free, but you needed to buy tickets to participate in the events. Showing up to the bingo night was free, but you needed to pay to play. There was a craft night that you had to pay to get your craft which included RSVPing prior.
We live in a low farms area, so I believe the counselors have a list of families who may need financial assistance. Every field trip permission, slip, and event email had a blurb up about reaching out to the counselor if you needed financial assistance. Families would round up or chip in to cover if they felt the need to do so. |
Anonymous
| I’m bemused by a lot of assumptions here that talent shows can be run super cheap. (I suppose they could, but if we want to show communities what we can do, with the best we have, then I’m all for fundraising to get what we need. Apart from that some schools simply don’t have the audio/video equipment, so they have to rent it or borrow it. That can cost a pretty penny, never mind hiring someone to run the soundboard / mixer. For certain sets, you might need wireless headsets, or for others boundary microphones. None of this is cheap. (For a set of, say, five girls, all micc'ed up, you’re talking three hundred dollars per child, or fifteen-hundred dollars. A mixer is three to eight hundred dollars. Quality speakers, if they aren't built-in, can cost another few thousand dollars.) Props can also run the gamut of cheap to expensive. The entry fee may also be a reflection of the space, maybe they want to keep it under a certain maximum of attendance. |
Anonymous
| In looking at all the equipment that might be needed, five to six wireless headsets; an analog/digital mixer; three to four speakers; a XLR snake; the speaker stands; XLR cables; lectern microphone; we’re easily talking about about eight thousands dollars worth. |
Anonymous
| This is why many people hate the PTA and call it Parents To Avoid. |
Anonymous
That’s insane. Our local ES used to have the fifth graders put on a little musical production before Covid and we just used the music department sound equipment. Our pta used to borrow it all the time. I don’t know many PTAs buying stuff like that (I mean unless the pta is in a really wealthy area ares like Bethesda or Potomac?) and quite frankly wouldn’t want my pta spending money on that anyway. |
Anonymous
Seriously. Thousands of dollars on mini broadway shows? Out of their minds |
Anonymous
That’s excessive. I don’t know how much it would cost but spending $8000 on an elementary school talent show is wildly insane. |
Anonymous
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Poor taste.
Donation box at entry. Sell a 50/50 raffle. Food sale. Sponsor signage. |
Anonymous
+1. If something isn’t already in the calendar go luck trying to add it for March and April. Spring Break and Testing is right around the corner. The last thing that teachers or administrators want is last minute distractions that take up teaching time. |
Anonymous
Op here- thanks for the feedback. Possibly but never too late for next year! I’ll still take the idea to the president and principal and hopefully they’ll like the idea. Thanks all for the great ideas |
Anonymous
| Well, I wouldn't necessarily assign the full value of all that equipment to just one show. :p (Who does that?) It's more amortized over five to ten years, over many performances, stage plays, musicals, talent shows, and more. But, in any case, the sound system in the APR is sometimes nonexistent. (Some schools simply don’t have any options). And there is no budget to update, usually . . . I do find it amusing that you think it's okay to use the music department equipment’s stuff, but not to support them any further than that. (Even though, in some cases, the PTA damages the equipment! There’s nothing like testing out relatively-recent speakers and finding out that someone, not the school, has cranked them to their max and damaged them to the point of just distorted output.) The kind of speakers we're talking about are not the karaoke kind you can find at Sam's Club, after all, for a few hundred dollars, after all. |
Anonymous
| Never mind that the equipment was originally meant for my own business, so what I do is volunteer my time and energy to a few schools in the region, three of which happen to be Title 1 status. (I know of several churches who help out too with their own stuff, too). But if the PTA want to fundraise, for whatever reason, I don't see the issue. So many departments are starved that whatever the PTA can bring to the table, so much the better. |