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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are there that many volunteer situations that are critical? In my kid's 6 years of elementary school, they've asked for volunteers to:

--Come in for 1 hour on the 4th tuesday of the month to change out the bulletin boards
--Set up TAW snacks in the teacher's work room
--Sell bingo cards for the evening bingo game

That's it. If the first two don't happen I think it's probably okay, and the last one shouldn't be an issue since all kids have to come with a guardian in the evening anyway. Some guardians are just going to sit at a table and take money.

My school doesn't have weekly/monthly volunteers for anything.[/quote]

Really? Not helping at library? Or being room parents, stuffing folders, making copies, organizing things, field trips, parties, field day, grade-specific days like pioneer day, picture day, book fair, probably more I forgot. We have a lot of repeat volunteers even if they are doing each of those events once or twice a year, it adds up to many times in the school in total. That's before any PTA events if those count.[/quote]

Sounds like they have no idea what’s going on at their kids’ school. No way there’s this little done by volunteers. What’s the point in even having a pta if their only mission is bingo night?  I guarantee there’s hundreds of hours of work you don’t know about. [/quote]

Actually I kind of feel the opposite. As a teacher at a school that doesn’t really have a PTA (our budget for the last year was approximately $600, and half of that was from suggested teacher dues), there are at least some schools in FCPS that don’t have an active parent community.

I’m always surprised to hear the differences on different sides of the county, but I don’t discount that picture.

FWIW, our librarian runs the book fair by herself once a year. Our staff make their own copies and move their own furniture (big stuff the custodians do). Picture day is run by the PE teachers, classroom teachers line up the kids and help the photographer take the forms and get them in place. We only do field trips that don’t require additional chaperones (because we won’t get any). During appreciation week the PTA budget buys pizzas for the staff but it’s the administration serving it.

One year our PTA in a school of ~800 kids was 3 moms. That’s it. They tried really hard but there’s only so much you can do when the family culture is to let school do school and keep home at home.[/quote]

This makes me a little sad. I take for granted all our PTA does. I hate that they are always asking for money, but this post now makes me appreciate our PTA more. We have one family event a month from October to May, like bingo, movie night, international night, family BBQ and ect… There are 4 in class events a year that room parents organize, Halloween party, Winter Party, Valentine's Day party and EOY party.

The PTA runs the book fair, raises money for teacher gift cards (every staff gets one at Christmas and teacher appreciation week, not just teachers).

I think we have at least 50 parents that regularly volunteer, between the class parties, events and other school activities (field trips, library and lunch duty). [/quote]

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