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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In my experience, a good chunk of the PTA volunteer roles are “make work” that don’t noticeably enhance the school experience for our kids or teachers in any way.

Having worked at and sent kids to schools that had massive PTAs, as well as schools where the entire PTA budget for the whole year was under $3000 and consists of 6 moms, most things aren’t necessary. No one really misses Halloween bingo or seasonable bulletin boards if they don’t happen this year. If no one joyfully wants to do it, just don’t—it’s really and truly fine.[/quote]

OP here and yes, this is probably my major take away. That's why I think the solution is the separate out the events planning function so that the PTA can focus primarily on the stuff that feels more central and necessary (and actually impacts the day to day experience of kids and teachers) and then the events committee can operate on the side and just plan events as they have resources, including volunteer availability, but no one views that as the reason the PTA exists.

One reason this could be good is that it would naturally allow a bit more ebb and flow with events depending on the actual interest of current families. Instead of "well we HAVE to do the fall festival, the spring festival, Halloween Bingo, the winter bake-off, Slip-and-Slide-apalooza, the annual Parents v. Teacher Tennis tourney, and 14 other events -- the PTA always does this stuff!" it's more like the people who want to do events get together in August and decide what they as a group want and have bandwidth to put on, and that's what they do, and it's not just endless obligation. So there may be years with tons of events because the parent population is more extroverted and energetic, and years with fewer events because it's a more reserved or busy group, and that has no impact on the actual work of the PTA which will chug along regardless. The conflation of PTA with events leads to misplaced understanding of what PTAs are for, I think, and thus also resentment ("why am I being constantly asked to volunteer to help run events I don't value?").[/quote]

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