Reply to PTA asked teachers to pay for student breakfast: unreasonable?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is your principal aware of this?  I would speak to them and have them deal with the PTA.  This is either a huge miscommunication or the PTA has lost its marbles.  
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This.  Our PTA doesn't ask for any funds from teachers except we do ask them to become real members.   That costs $15/year.  Of which a few dollars go to national PTA.

We stock the teachers' lounge with free food at appreciation events.  And every teacher gets a $25 gift card at the winter holidays

So no teacher is out of pocket due to PTA.[/quote]

As a teacher, I would much rather that my PTA pay my dues, than that they ask me to fork over $15, and then consider a $25 gift card (to where?) months later to be repayment.  [/quote]

We don't require anyone to join.  It's a sign of support for the mission of the PTA (ours is actually a PTSA because high-school students can join).

There aren't any waivers of dues for anyone. I pay for my kid's student membership.  The administrators pay.  When you pay your dues you become eligible for other benefits like applying for national PTA grants and scholarships.  And you fill in your own personal contact details and preferences.

I'm sure the teachers get more than $15 in free coffee, tea, snacks.  Not hard at $2.50 for a Coke.  The $25 gift card goes to all teachers and not just those who sign up for PTA.  It's a gift funded by donors and the gift card drive is managed by PTA.

So you are the kind of person who would get petty about being out $15 for 3 months.  OK.  I spent $100 of my personal money on snacks for the teachers' lounge for beginning of the school year.  I guess we don't share priorities.

Gift cards are usually teacher's choice and they are usually Target, grocery store, or gas cards for our local stations.  Not useless stuff.[/quote]

I'm the PP you replied to.  The thing that bothered me, more than the $15, is that you said "we don't ask" and then immediately after described asking.  Teaching these days is a death by a thousand cuts.  It's not one unreasonable demand, it's 100s of demands that, on the surface seem reasonable.  $15 is not a lot, but when you add it to the fact that I am asked to pay for my own cleaning supplies, and school supplies for the kid whose parents didn't buy them, etc . . . It adds up.

I'm also going to say that while I have been known to pick up a diet coke if I go in the teacher's lounge and there's a free one, the idea that a diet coke, which isn't a drink I'd ever choose if there were other options, should not be thought of as a replacement for $2.50 of my own money.  The diet coke is either replacing water, which is free, or the $0.40 drink I might have brought from Aldi's.  Also, the things in the teacher's lounge are generally considered to be gifts.  It's not the recipient's responsibility to pay for gifts.

If there is some benefit to the PTA to teachers being members, then offer to reimburse people who join.  If you're asking us to join because the PTA gets to keep $10 of the $15, then recognize that you are asking for donations.  I donate a lot to my school, but I'm not going to do it through a platform that takes a significant cut, and I'm going to choose carefully and donate for the needs I see as most pressing.  [/quote]

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