Our PTA was great. It helped that we are in an UMC suburb so it was well funded. They funded and staffed a 5K race, educational materials for teachers to use, some in-school volunteer events, all-school assemblies with arts/cultural offerings, a book fair, five other evening events open to certain grades or the whole school, and funding and toy drives to benefit the school's small number of FARMs kids and our high FARMs sister school.

Shepherd Elementary here and I'm not on the PTO but all the members are incredibly competent, kind and inclusive so far as I have seen.

Anonymous wrote:Our PTA involvement is a status symbol. We also raise millions of dollars a year for an already-wealthy neighborhood public school, but we do give significant amounts to poorer schools at EOY. The neighborhoods that are less wealthy don’t have as robust a PTA, probably due to lack of parental involvement. I’m in the south.

What district is this? Interesting to hear it’s done this way. We have a larger fund that is handled by a paid non profit that raises millions through a gala and large scale events in our small district but funds are handled through the individual school’s booster club. Even with Robinhood the parents are fine giving it away? I’m surprised. We live in a wealthy area and suggested giving is 1635 a child a year.

Anonymous wrote:My old school pta was always lacking volunteers so we welcomed any and all help that was offered. Our new school pta has so many opinionated women who can’t get along. The simplest tasks turns into a huge disagreement. Maybe our pta just has a lot of very strong inflexible personalities.

Ours is like this too. I am very involved but always pick positions that aren’t super controversial and don’t make too many changes, you’ll have people freaking out.

Title 1 school - not really existent. Getting better but not the same in terms of amount of activities, money and help in relation to other schools.

Our PTA involvement is a status symbol. We also raise millions of dollars a year for an already-wealthy neighborhood public school, but we do give significant amounts to poorer schools at EOY. The neighborhoods that are less wealthy don’t have as robust a PTA, probably due to lack of parental involvement. I’m in the south.

They’ve always seemed so useless. I don’t pay attention to them.

I'm not even sure the school has a PTA?

My old school pta was always lacking volunteers so we welcomed any and all help that was offered. Our new school pta has so many opinionated women who can’t get along. The simplest tasks turns into a huge disagreement. Maybe our pta just has a lot of very strong inflexible personalities.