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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a child at a title 1 school where the teachers don't ask. I do send in supplies and send in extra money to cover others for field trips.. But many of the other families there do not have the money to just send in supplies. They don't have the money to join the PTA. There is pretty much zero PTA because most families don't attend the meetings as they have other obligations that come first, like work. The teachers fund everything out of pocket. Like incentives that they give to kids, food for parties if no one contributes, wipes and good quality paper towels, etc. Is it inequitable. Yes. But I don't see anything changing any time soon.

[quote=Anonymous][

I'm a parent who does care.  I recommend that if you need supplies, you should ask your class parents, versus whine about how unfair it is you don't have supplies from MCPS.  If the teacher asked for something, as other teachers did in the past, I'd just send it in - no questions asked.  If it's a problem that you're not permitted to ask for supplies, go talk to the Union.  During covid, that was another story.  At one of the schools my child attended, the rumor was the teachers were told not to beg parents for covid resources (the rumor was it made MCPS leadership look bad since they were supposed to spend their ESSER money on covid supplies?), but we still managed to figure out what cleaning and medical supplies the classroom needed that wasn't available (wink).

However, if some other school has a parent looking to put money into their own kid's PTA, that's fine.  It's really one of my business and couldn't care less.  If, as a teacher, you feel that isn't fair, then go work at whatever school you think that is (I've never heard of a school PTA having $40K but whatever, good for them).

Now, if you feel that your school doesn't have basic office (non-covid) supplies from MCPS Central Office, I really don't know what to say to that.  It's not possible that can happen.  Now, you may be telling the truth.  Maybe you really are a teacher and maybe your school doesn't have supplies, but maybe you're also lying, because it's not possible that a 3 billion dollar budget doesn't have school supplies on-hand.  If that were happening, it would probably be featured in Bethesda Beat or on the evening news.  And if it's not, then whose fault is that?  The PTA?  Nope.  Sorry hun.  You need to point the finger at your Central Office.[/quote][/quote]

As a room parent at one of these schools, I can tell you some principals don't allow teachers to ask.  We were at one of those schools.  You can do parties really cheaply with mini waters, costco cake and some other treats/fruit or pizza.  I spent generally around $50 , sometimes I'd get help, sometimes not but it was always surprising parents who had money didn't contribute or they just knew I'd do it.[/quote]

+1. My kids have been in focus schools in Einstein cluster for years and there are strange dynamics that go on. Schools may lack supplies and curricular materials but principals don't want to look like they are not managing their budgets properly so they do not want teachers to ask parents for things.

As far as I could tell our ES school principals felt that PTA fundraising existed to fund field trips for students who couldn't afford them. Annoyingly there is no transparency for school level budgets, so we (the PTA board) would ask the principal how much money they were given for field trips so we could make up the shortfall, but principal would never share these numbers with us. We were always just told they would take however much we wanted to give (no maximum # of course).[/quote]

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