Reply to Do you think parents who volunteer and donate more to schools deserve better treatment for their child?

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "Do you think parents who volunteer and donate more to schools deserve better treatment for their child?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids are now in middle/high school but I have spent all of their school years volunteering, including serving as PTA president. I have always tried hard to not get preferential treatment for my kids because I didn't want other parents volunteering in order to pull favors from the administration. I was always very careful to not ask for any special considerations as I didn't want PTA to be viewed that way.

However, I will say that I have found that other parents judge the more involved parents more harshly when their kids do make mistakes. And they expect that because I am a "community leader", I should be more apologetic when my kid has had behavioral issues. Yes, people have said that to me. And it made me understand that they expect more of my kids too, just because of the positions that I have chosen to hold. And that's not fair. They are good kids but they aren't perfect and neither of us deserve to be scrutinized more than any other parent or child because of volunteer work that is supposed to benefit the school community. So I took a step back. Because I don't need that and neither do my kids.

OP, I would give these parents the benefit of the doubt that they are volunteering for the right reasons and not to get ahead. And if their kids do get into trouble, give them some grace. It sucks to deal with school discipline issues as it is. Its even worse when people are judging you when you are trying to navigate it.  [/quote]

I believe that this was your experience, but I have also experienced a PTA president who explicitly leveraged her role to get certain favors for her kids. Like threatened to quit her role (and leave the PTA in the lurch right before school started) if the school didn't give one of her kids something she really wanted. How do I know this? Because she told me she did it. Proudly! Like "duh anyone would do this, I work so hard, they owe me."

So sometimes the resentment towards PTA members is justified. It just depends on the situation.[/quote]

PP here. I don't doubt there are those who operate that way. But I hope that's the norm and it hasn't been in my experience. That's the opposite of what PTA should be. Heck, maybe we would have an easier time getting volunteers if we did operate that way at our school. Instead it's like pulling teeth to get anyone to do anything. [/quote]

That is 100% true!  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics