Reply to There Needs to Be Enforced Equity Among PTA's

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[quote=Anonymous]Np here who was involved in a high-FARMs school’s PTA. 
I want to correct the notion that these PTAs are struggling because the families are poor. To be sure, the families don’t have huge amounts of disposable income to donate to their local PTA, but that isn’t the root of the matter, IMO.

Many kids in these schools have parents who weren’t born in the US, and did not have anything like a PTA in their own childhood. (My friend whose parents were immigrant engineers —and heavily invested in their kids’ academic success—said that this was the case for her parents back in the 70s, too.) The PTAs (including local and state/national) also do very little, if anything, to explain to these new-American families why the PTA is something they should care about or join. It’s an American “institution”, if you will, which is why US-raised parents join their PTAs when their kids start school.
So PTAs suffer from a lack of buy-in/membership. Since the body of members evolves annually as kids enter/leave the school, there is a huge potential for moderately active PTAs to become less active PTAs as the prior officers move on. And for less-active PTAs to hang on by a shoestring (eg, enough members to actually do stuff), and from there become defunct. It’s a lot easier to step into an active PTA and play a role than it is to restart a PTA, especially if staff/teacher involvement has also not been strong. 
With active members, PTAs could do various things even without deep-pocketed members. They can organize activities and promote school spirit, and encourage more involvement. They can fundraise from local or regional businesses. And they can have enough people to vote wisely on spending decisions so that any funds aren’t frittered away just because one member wants to use them for his/her own priority.
I’ll add that the absence of a strong PTA at the ES level is also a key reason why the middle school’s PTA may be weak. If parents do not see a PTA in action at the ES level, they will have little reason to understand the value of joining at the middle school.[/quote]

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