Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think by volunteering you are seems and so are your kids. I’m not preferential treatment is happening consciously, but yes, you get seen and heard and obviously that benefits your child.

Depends on the volunteering. I've volunteered many times at each of my kids' schools, but prefer behind the scenes and low key stuff like chaperoning field trips, helping with set up for an event, that kind of thing.

Some parents choose or are chosen for more visible volunteering roles. That's a-ok -- I don't actually want to do that stuff, because I'm kind of shy and not super social and just don't have the personality or skill set for anything that is going to require me to talk to lots of people or interface with school administration.

But only the latter ensures that a parent and their kids are more "seen" than others. I can tell you from experience that you can volunteer a couple times a month for years at a school and still have admin look at you blankly because they don't know your name or who your kid is. So volunteering does not automatically result in that kind of treatment. Only certain kinds of volunteer roles (PTA board, mainly, in my experience).

PTAs usually operate with several committees and plenty of people involved via volunteerism not selection, so it’s rarely the exclusive setup you’re describing. Meetings are open to all families, whether they’ve officially joined or not. If you want to get a clearer sense of how things run, attending your school’s parent‑teacher organization meeting is the easiest way to do that.

If that’s not your jam, it’s still hard to imagine someone volunteering multiple times a month and remaining completely unknown to staff. And if you’re naturally more reserved, that’s something you need to reconcile and find a strategy for yourself with wanting more visibility from admin. At my FCPS school, volunteers are greeted warmly in the front office, but the principal isn’t hanging out by the check‑in area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a blanket statement, no. Some students have parents who are working 2 jobs, or are in foster care, and they should absolutely not be penalized for not having basically a SAHP who can volunteer 10 hours a week or a rich parent who can fund the entire PTA.

If we are allowed nuance- I do think that if a parent is an unusually helpful volunteer, or takes on volunteer tasks that one one wants (everyone wants to chaperone the cute half day field trip with their child, no one wants to volunteer to mop the cafeteria floors and take all the trash to the dump after the school carnival ends at 9pm), it should not be frowned upon if that kid's family maybe gets picked to run the most fun carnival booth, or maybe if a parent volunteers to be the backstage mom at a drama club performance- therefore not getting to watch her child perform, since she's backstage, this is a classic job that no one signs up for ever in our school's drama club- then that student's family (the other parent, etc) gets front row seats to the performance and a free copy of the DVD recording to show to the backstage mom afterwords.

So if you miss your kids performing because you have time to volunteer, you should get preferential treatment but if you have to earn money and miss it, tough.

That is pretty gross classism

It's because she VOLUNTEERED to miss her kid's performance in order to help the show go on. I am completely fine with that. Like how airlines offer you a few hundred bucks to give up your seat and take a different flight later in the day if they're overbooked.

She VOLUNTEERED because she has the resources to do so. No job/flexible job. I don’t think we should give people with more resources more perks, as they have plenty already.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a blanket statement, no. Some students have parents who are working 2 jobs, or are in foster care, and they should absolutely not be penalized for not having basically a SAHP who can volunteer 10 hours a week or a rich parent who can fund the entire PTA.

If we are allowed nuance- I do think that if a parent is an unusually helpful volunteer, or takes on volunteer tasks that one one wants (everyone wants to chaperone the cute half day field trip with their child, no one wants to volunteer to mop the cafeteria floors and take all the trash to the dump after the school carnival ends at 9pm), it should not be frowned upon if that kid's family maybe gets picked to run the most fun carnival booth, or maybe if a parent volunteers to be the backstage mom at a drama club performance- therefore not getting to watch her child perform, since she's backstage, this is a classic job that no one signs up for ever in our school's drama club- then that student's family (the other parent, etc) gets front row seats to the performance and a free copy of the DVD recording to show to the backstage mom afterwords.

So if you miss your kids performing because you have time to volunteer, you should get preferential treatment but if you have to earn money and miss it, tough.

That is pretty gross classism

It's because she VOLUNTEERED to miss her kid's performance in order to help the show go on. I am completely fine with that. Like how airlines offer you a few hundred bucks to give up your seat and take a different flight later in the day if they're overbooked.

She VOLUNTEERED because she has the resources to do so. No job/flexible job. I don’t think we should give people with more resources more perks, as they have plenty already.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a blanket statement, no. Some students have parents who are working 2 jobs, or are in foster care, and they should absolutely not be penalized for not having basically a SAHP who can volunteer 10 hours a week or a rich parent who can fund the entire PTA.

If we are allowed nuance- I do think that if a parent is an unusually helpful volunteer, or takes on volunteer tasks that one one wants (everyone wants to chaperone the cute half day field trip with their child, no one wants to volunteer to mop the cafeteria floors and take all the trash to the dump after the school carnival ends at 9pm), it should not be frowned upon if that kid's family maybe gets picked to run the most fun carnival booth, or maybe if a parent volunteers to be the backstage mom at a drama club performance- therefore not getting to watch her child perform, since she's backstage, this is a classic job that no one signs up for ever in our school's drama club- then that student's family (the other parent, etc) gets front row seats to the performance and a free copy of the DVD recording to show to the backstage mom afterwords.

So if you miss your kids performing because you have time to volunteer, you should get preferential treatment but if you have to earn money and miss it, tough.

That is pretty gross classism

It's because she VOLUNTEERED to miss her kid's performance in order to help the show go on. I am completely fine with that. Like how airlines offer you a few hundred bucks to give up your seat and take a different flight later in the day if they're overbooked.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they should not. However, being involved is a way to develop one's background knowledge and awareness and that information sometimes leads to making a request that others wouldn't think to make.

Like what kind of request?

If you are around the school, the teachers tell you how things get done.

I never used this info for my benefit but one teacher told me how parents can try to get their kid into a certain teacher's room without asking for a specific teacher. Nobody is allowed to ask for a specific teacher.

Would you like to know the secret? It's pretty logical.

She said you tell your child's current teacher what qualities your kid needs in a teacher to do well in the following year. And then you describe the qualities of the teacher you want. The current year teacher has some input into the beginning of the class shaping for the following year. So you say "Janie needs a teacher with a quiet voice." Or "Janie needs a teacher who gives out more math homework". And maybe if stars align your kid gets a better chance if getting into a particular room.

There you go. That's the hot tip I earned for 13 years of PTA participation and volunteering.

I also, during a PTA meeting, heard a parent asking questions about accelerated classes/IEPs for students with beyond grade level skills that went right over my head. I remembered the question but did not understand until my kids got to high school. If I'd understood, I might have figured out how to get my kids bumped up a year in math classes. Because my district doesn't have any "gifted" programs, I didn't realize that accelerated options were possible. Turns out they were, but your testing needed to show you were 2 grade levels ahead in ability. I easily could have had my kids tutored to that standard. So that's an example of something that might have benefited me that I heard about at a PTA meeting that was open to anyone.

The return on time invested is pretty poor if you're just looking for an advantage for your kids. But no surprise that people who are paying attention occasionally learn useful things.

Also...this is a very important point...this knowledge is available to anyone who asks. Schools have limited resources and nobody wants more headaches so this stuff isn't always going to be widely publicized. But it's not a classist conspiracy.

Just ask. Speak up. Participate. Request. You may learn something useful and/or get something you want. That's basic civics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:Definitely. We volunteered all the time in elementary school, when it came time for the AAP application, we kind of just left it to the teachers to handle it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a blanket statement, no. Some students have parents who are working 2 jobs, or are in foster care, and they should absolutely not be penalized for not having basically a SAHP who can volunteer 10 hours a week or a rich parent who can fund the entire PTA.

If we are allowed nuance- I do think that if a parent is an unusually helpful volunteer, or takes on volunteer tasks that one one wants (everyone wants to chaperone the cute half day field trip with their child, no one wants to volunteer to mop the cafeteria floors and take all the trash to the dump after the school carnival ends at 9pm), it should not be frowned upon if that kid's family maybe gets picked to run the most fun carnival booth, or maybe if a parent volunteers to be the backstage mom at a drama club performance- therefore not getting to watch her child perform, since she's backstage, this is a classic job that no one signs up for ever in our school's drama club- then that student's family (the other parent, etc) gets front row seats to the performance and a free copy of the DVD recording to show to the backstage mom afterwords.

So if you miss your kids performing because you have time to volunteer, you should get preferential treatment but if you have to earn money and miss it, tough.

That is pretty gross classism

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely. We volunteered all the time in elementary school, when it came time for the AAP application, we kind of just left it to the teachers to handle it.

What are you talking about?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they should not. However, being involved is a way to develop one's background knowledge and awareness and that information sometimes leads to making a request that others wouldn't think to make.

Like what kind of request?