Reply to Let's talk PTAs and participation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]At my kids' schools most PTA mtgs are a waste of time because they are not set up to be a discussion on a topic; they're just reading out stuff that could be communicated via email. "Here's what we raised from x fundraiser; next month we have a spirit night at y restaurant." The leads just provide short updates but it's not "let's have a discussion on a given topic to get parent feedback".

I would LOVE to attend the latter and would even get a sitter for meetings like that. But i've given up going to the "report out" meetings. They are not a good use of time. [/quote]

This is how ours were at the elementary level as well.  I did serve as recording secretary for 2 years, so I know that the minutes were always posted on the pta website.  My particular school PTA wasn't into using FB even though I tried.  They were effective at getting volunteers for events though and lots of committee meetings happened via email conversations.

As it was, the meetings often went 2 hours.  I know personally, that whenever I saw a parent come in who wasn't on the Board, I thought, "Oh great, it's going to be a 3 hour meeting."  Rarely if ever did people come just to listen / learn about what was planned -- they came to bitch about something or make a pitch for an event that they wanted to do.[/quote]

I gave up going too after learning the format of meetings over several years. With report out meetings I can find most information from the meeting minutes. Every so often I have a follow up question and it's easy to ask someone who attended and typically their answer is that nothing was discussed about it furthering my resolve to not bother to attend. Like the opinion above, if the information or opinion doesn't come from the board or the principal, the message is very clear that the leaders don't really want to hear about it. Never mind that all the info they talk about is typically worthless drivel about themselves that goes on way too long which could all be condensed and put into an email. Your comment is what makes the meeting run too long. It requires thinking and discussing which they really would prefer to pay lip service to. Why would someone want to give up a morning or evening to hear what was planned by someone else if they had no input? That's what email is for. Isn't that pretty obvious that if someone shows up, they don't really want to just hear a list of things already planned by someone else and may want to be heard? I'm not sure why this is so mind blowing to the PP's on these boards. Just save everyone a trip to the school and stop pretending that you want to hear from anyone else.[/quote]

DP. The point to showing up is so that you can learn more about how the PTA operates (and thus how it squares with whatever you want to do) and so that the PTA leadership can get to know you as someone who is engaged and invested in the PTA and thus likely to actually follow through in whatever you say you’re going to do rather than flaking once it’s not new and exciting anymore.[/quote]

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