Best and Worst of PTA events?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

We earned more than $20K from Boosterthon after we had already done an amazing silent auction that raised $22K! And our school is 28% Farms! Do you know who was giving $20 flat donations or 50 cents a lap for their kid?! The FARMS families!!! Everyone wants to be part of raising money for the school and part of supporting and sponsoring their child in doing something fun! You guys can knock it all you want, but Boosterthon blew us away with what they provided to our school. The morale is high and the classroom "team spirit" during that two weeks and beyond was off the charts! And that is priceless!

Wow, I don't think I've read something so tone deaf and self absorbed in a long time. Do you realize that families on FARMS are food insecure, have difficulty getting together rent each month, struggle to buy their kids new shoes or winter coats and spending $20 on Boosterthon doesn't mean just giving up 4 Starbucks drinks? Do you understand the humiliation of poverty that poor kids and their families experience around people like you?

Of course the poor kids don't want to be excluded! Everyday when these kids walk into school they see how your kids have so much more. They see your kids in a house with their own bedroom while they are in a tiny apartment sharing a room with multiple siblings or even their parents. They see your kids new shoes, soccer ball and new school supplies. The parents giving you your $20 that would have paid for food for the next week aren't doing it because they love the priceless experience that you brought to the school -they are doing it so that at least for this their kid isn't on the sideline. They are doing it because they want to avoid the humiliation that you'll think they don't do their part. For once, they don't want their kids to feel less than the others. Boosterthon knows this and plays off this feeling. Its just morally wrong on so many levels.

Tone deaf is exactly what THIS reply is, actually. I grew up in one of these families and the idea that you would think that families like ours don't take pride in contributing even the little amount that we can is insulting and dehumanizing. Yes we were food poor often didn't know how we would get groceries for the next week, but we also wanted to feel like part of the school community and took pride in giving too.
I know you think you're being kind and posting in defense of families like mine, but maybe speak for yourself.

Not the PP, but agree with them. Of course, all kids should be able to participate in activities, and the pressure to give money in order to do so fully is what is offensive. Families shouldn't be put into the position that they HAVE to for their kid to fit in socially. Sure-- FARMS families may be happy to give and there are plenty of opportunities for them to do so. But it's the social pressure of Boosterthon that I don't like.

My school had it a few years ago. Our income is high enough that it's not a problem, but I really hated the pressure. We discontinued it because so many parents hated it. (Though I'll admit that the $$ was good-- it helped our PTA budget for a few years after we stopped!)

Our school activities are really crummy. They have lots of kids/few instructors and classes are not run well. It makes no sense to pay $20 per class for group music with 40 kids on 4 instruments when you can pay $30-35 for private music lessons where kids learn something. Same for sports. Its good if you need aftercare but that's it. I don't the lower income hate. That could easily be any one of our families if we didn't have the opportunities we do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So paying someone else to do the work is not a bad option. Also, it looks like Boosterthon provides a T-shirt to all the kids at the school. We did that too. That alone costs thousands of dollars. So $15,000 profit from $30,000 raised is actually not ridiculous, based on my experience.

Except Boosterthon is still using the parents as volunteers in many cases. We do T-Shirts too but even a good quality T-Shirt is $10 or less bulk. If you have 600 students that 6K -most likely $4500 with the bulk ordering discount. We had businesses sponsor the shirt. We called local camps, sports class for kids, fitness centers, grocery stores, dentists etc and offered to put their logo on the back of the shirt in exchange for donating toward the event. We covered the water bottles, T-shirt and inexpensive medal give aways all from the business donors.

Yeah, I agree with you that the price of the t-shirts is about $5000, a significant chunk, and we did that too about business sponsors, -another thing that took an incredible amount of work from a small number of volunteers. And I have no interest in promoting Boosterthon -- I didn't even know what that was until reading about it here on DCUM maybe last year. I really just want to point out how much work all this is on the parent volunteers, and I wish that parents would just contribute at the beginning of the year, as other posters have said, and we could stop all this effort from parent volunteers for fundraising. but as other posters have said, parents just don't do that, despite paying lip service to that as a great idea. Personally, I'm wiped out after doing this for years and have decreasing interest in helping at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP our PTA (wealthy) organizes book and clothing drives to benefit our sister school's PTA (high FARMS rate).

This WaPo article talks about PTA money-sharing initiatives in DCPS. Parents raise massive amounts of money at some public schools. Should they share it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/parents-raise-massive-amounts-of-money-at-some-public-schools-should-they-share-it/2018/03/16/e3a53eb0-1650-11e8-b681-2d4d462a1921_story.html?utm_term=.bed3199398ce

We don't have a sister school but I hate how our school collects toys and clothing to donate when we have kids at our school who could use it. I'd happily donate to kids at our school but I'm not donating to the principals random charity.

No, they shouldn't have to share it.

What stops your school from donating the toys to kids at your school? Also, are you sure they don't? My son is in 3rd grade and I had no idea until this year that the food we donate during the food drive goes to kids at our school to get them through the winter break.
Full disclosure: I am in Arlington. But I think the same principles apply.

Every year our wonderful counselor takes on a toy drive. Families sponsor families in need. She makes sure she has one toy for every child in VPI. She even tries to accommodate special requests.
However donating toys to your own schools will require support from your school administration. PTAs are not supposed to know who the needy children are but maybe if your PTA agrees to organize the gift collection, your school would be willing to do the rest.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Just curious, in my experience Scholastic books are cheaper than B&n for example. Why do you call them overpriced?

Because the ones that I compared to Amazon ran about 20% higher, but it's not like I did an exhaustive comparison.

And that's why Amazon is killing off small bookstores and other businesses and forming a monopoly on every industry in this country...

Same PP here - didn't finish my thought. Book fair prices will also be higher than Amazon because it is a fundraiser. You pay a bit more so that the school can get some money back. How much does your school get when you buy your books from Amazon??? (0.5% is what the Amazon Smile program donates if you designate a charity every time you check out).

That's why I suggested simply donating $$$ to the PTA rather than buying books from Scholastic. Also, I have enough books in my house already and prefer to use the public library.

Most people especially the ones in our high FARMS school, are more likely to purchase books or other things at events rather than handing out a donation check. We tried doing that at the beginning of the year, and nope, it didn't work. Another thing you're missing about the book fair is that book fairs are community/family events. In our school, the kids LOVE book fair week and we hold mini events during that time, such as Bingo, movie night, etc. It's a way for the community to come together, to interact with other families, the principal, staff, etc. Sure, you can do a book fair at B&N or through Amazon but the support in numbers just won't be there due to the lack of the "community" feel that the Scholastic book fairs bring to the table.

[Anonymous]

Definitely multicultural night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Worst

1. Scholastic Book Fair expensive books and scholastic makes most of the money. Time intensive and always run by diva martyr moms who would give Putin a run for his money in dictatorships without term limits.

2. Anything Boosterthon. Our school has an athletic day/fun run that was run by parents which was fun and free. We looked at Boosterthon and good grief it looks awful. Half the money goes to the company and they advise you not to tell parents. They go into the classroom and apply high pressure to kids.

3. Jump Rope for Heart: Great cause but also has heavy handed tactics at our school. Expensive and they push kids to spend more for prizes. If you don't sign up, donate $$ then your kid gets to sit in class alone while all the other kids have a fun popsicle party. This wasn't PTA but run by a teacher in our school.

4. Read-a-thon - too complicated and there really is nothing fun about recording your minutes and keeping track of sheets, It felt more like an accounting exercise.

Best

1. Beginning of the year and end of year picnic/carnival - easy, kids get to run around, good chance to meet other parents
2. New family welcome event - this was great, it was at someone's house on a large lot our first year. Kids ran around and met other future friends.
3. International Night - parents REALLY got into this at our school, good food
4. Science Fair - coordinated by a teacher, a PITA if you are hosting your kids team to put it together but a really good event
5. Book donation - collected used books and gave them to school with high FARMS for the counselor/medi specialist to just give out to kids to keep
6. Other used donation drives - a good way to give something that is needed and clean house.

OK

1. Bingo Night - fun but gets old after many years
2. Movie Night - good for younger kids
3. Talent Show - kids who like to perform enjoy it

It is interesting that you dislike all fundraisers but like all events that are freebies. Your "Worst" events fund your "Best" events. You sound like just another freeloader parent at the school.

NP. Our PTA really isn't funded through these types of events -- most of the donations come through a single large donation requested as part of PTA membership.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

DP and I’d even overlook the limited book options if there weren’t so many crappy trinkets. I always volunteer during the book fair and half the kids just want to buy those.

[Anonymous]

When my kids were in ES our PTA stopped using Scholastic and started using Bookworm for our book fairs. The quality of the books was way better than Scholastic and there wasn’t the junky non-book stuff.

[Anonymous]

https://www.bookwormcentral.com/

[Anonymous]

International Night is always fun. Book fairs with pajama night and milk and cookies are fun. School picnics suck. The food trucks suck and the lines are so long.

The talent show is OK. I can only watch so many kids play the piano. The Bollywood dances are meh and I hate the music. Ethiopian dances are lame also.

[Anonymous]

PTA runs the planetarium with parent volunteers at our school since teacher can’t teach it due to being PTA funded and built. The PTA used to run the school play out of Adventure theater with a Director before Adventure theater reorganize. Some PTAs are better than others

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:International Night is always fun. Book fairs with pajama night and milk and cookies are fun. School picnics suck. The food trucks suck and the lines are so long.

The talent show is OK. I can only watch so many kids play the piano. The Bollywood dances are meh and I hate the music. Ethiopian dances are lame also.

Agree. My kids always want to go but I’d prefer to skip. They always end up whiny about the lines and the way our school campus is set up there’s no central hang out area. Kids are constantly running back and forth between the playground, parking lot, and adjacent neighborhood park.

[Anonymous]

I thought all schools were the same? I guess community matters

[Anonymous]

What about book sales organized by PTA? Are those usually successful?

[Anonymous]

The best =™free Dunkin donut
Worst =the desperate house wives campaign against your job bc their little angel earned a B instead of an A