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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support?  This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

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Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.[/quote]

20 events?  Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.  [/quote]

It absolutely is enormous. The problem is that nothing ever comes off the schedule. A few of these are revenue-generating and I get wanting to have maybe 2-3 school-based festival type events throughout the year to give families a chance to be present and facilitate relationships and school spirit. But our school does like 4-5 fundraisers (one really big one and then several more scattered through the year), I think 6 family night type events (think bingo night, international night, literacy night, etc.), a series of "parent socials" where the PTA provides childcare and parents can socialize, and a couple more smaller things. It's a lot but my understanding is that whenever they suggest scaling back, someone says "no we can't stop doing X event, it's a tradition" so they never do.

They never have enough volunteers, the PTA is really overworked, and it's getting hard to recruit people to take on PTA roles because it's such a heavy lift. I know I have no interest. But we also don't attend most of this stuff so I don't feel guilty. We make 3 or 4 of the family nights throughout the year and I'll write a check for the fundraiser but we don't go, and that's it. My acquaintance is the PTA president and I know she is drowning and I feel bad for her but it's clear the problem is they need to streamline and no one is willing to do it.[/quote]

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