To think joining the PTA was a big mistake?

[PTAstandsforPainInTheArse]

I've been a member for a couple of years, Chair for a year and now I'm just miserable with it. We are actually a "friends of" rather than a pta as the teachers at some point, refused. Which is fine, they certainly so enough in my eyes.

There's 10 of us in the committee, 3 are standing down, 2 never respond to messages, and everything just seems to be a battle.

I feel like I'm doing everything from uniform sorts to organising discos, all the documentation needed, battle with the school with what they will and won't let us do as we can't do anything involving sweet sales or cake sales.

Now I've just had a message about something that I was pretty sure someone else said they were sorting but apparently they're not.

Parents moan about everything but don't bloody volunteer!

Why do I bother?

Is every other one like this too?

I want to give up but seeing as I'm going to be at the school for another few years, I thought it would be a good thing to do!

Urgh!

Yes completely thankless task. Staff don't want to know. Ours the chair would not share what needed to be done or you would turn up and it had been done. Not enough people at events. I did 1 year.

I was part of the PTA. When our children were in year 6, we realised that all of the volunteers were parents of soon to be year 7, and that would mean the PTA would be no- more.

During our “reign” we did recruitment drives, got the teachers involved, became a connector for parents to the school - but most people just didn’t want to get involved. We raised a good amount too- the school would happily ask us to fund the next climbing frame - but couldn’t allocate a member of staff to help out when we were giving out food to families on low income or wanted to share the results of the parent survey.

We had 2 chairs quit - honestly we didn’t mind in the long run because we are all volunteering our time. If the school really want you involved, they should invest in it.

Do what you can. And when the parents wonder why the Christmas and Easter fairs are not happening, remind them that they can bring them back by supporting and getting involved in the PTA.

I don’t have any resentment towards you. I don’t know you. Just highlighting my experience in case you see any parallels as this may be why people don’t want to get involved.

Make these two events your last OP and walk away knowing you did a good job. Volunteering for anything these days is a nightmare which is really sad.

I really appreciate all your comments.

Thank you, I'm going to keep going for now til at least Christmas as we have spent deposits on events so I need to see those through. I think that's fair. Then I will reassess!

Today was strange though, the rest of the committee have pulled together to sort something I said I'm not doing. And the school have been attentive and helpful today and I've had a few more volunteers today..... so hopefully things are improving.

I thought I'd just give you an update.

The AGM pulled in 2 more committee members and 1 of them is just awesome at getting volunteers and is really supportive. It also saw a couple of the annoying ones stand down. However, no one else volunteered as chair so it's me for the foreseeable future.

The 2 events I organised went extremely well so with those, and a few other bits, we've raised nearly £8500 since September!! We're setting a new record with our fund raising this school year and I'm really proud of that. We raised just under £11k for the 23/24 school year.

The bigger of the 2 events I organise has definitely seen a turn in the way the school community sees us, I think they've now finally realised how much we do and raise.

So thank you for reading my initial rant and for the advice and I just wanted to let you know that it's not all doom and gloom.

Wow that’s amazing! And an incredible amount of money. What have been your best events?

We just added fireworks night to our calendar, and it raised nearly £5500 alone and not one single complaint!!
Halloween disco is very popular every year. We're organising a Christmas raffle, easier than a fair with stalls etc.
We do break the rules day and own clothes days. Our summer event is Inflatables day, massive earner, nearly £3500 last year.
Plus easyfundraising, commission on clothing labels, Christmas trees, uniform sales.

Amazing - I bet the children just love these events .

Two options

Draft a letter giving a list of events and the number of people required to help at each one. Ask people to reply saying which events they can commit to. Say that unless enough helpers are available the events will be cancelled. Stick to what you say.

Alternatively draft a cheery letter /email saying that it has been a pleasure to be involved over x length of time but you are unable to continue and invite interested volunteers to contact the school to continue the work.

I would go for 2 but whichever you need to toughen up.

Having read your update I can see the problem. You don't really want to step down and you like to run big events. However other people cannot commit to the time and responsibility of organising fireworks displays etc.

wow! How does the fireworks work- do the companies who run them charge loads? We are thinking about doing something by next year.

We have a Xmas fair but have a raffle too. The raffle raises loads easily but we do find the fair raises even more!

We have discos which are good mayhe raise a couple of hundred. Uniform sales we do second hand so we raise very small amounts.

What do you do for Christmas trees?!

There's a local florist who sells the trees, we advertise them and when people quote us when ordering, we get £5, but it basically works out as a free tree for the school.

We used a professional company for the fireworks who were excellent.

The thing is op you actually love it 😀😀

I knew a woman like you - one of the best people I’ve ever met! No one could match her though when she left the it all went abit rubbish.

I would like to get to the point of releasing all the event dates at the beginning of the school year with a volunteer deadline of maybe a month before each one, if we don't get the volunteers, the event doesn't happen.

I bave to disagree. In our school of 250 infants we raised over £10k every year my children were there. That money was used for educational experiences that the underfunded schools couldn't have plus equipment and outdoor areas.

YANBU. I loathed being on my dc's primary school's PTA and didn't last long. I'm a teacher (secondary) which probably made me less patient with it all. The amount of hassle and fuss seemed totally disproportionate to the amount of money raised. I suspect many Headteachers would secretly like not to have a PTA, as it's yet one more thing to deal with, and the amount of money raised is a drop in the ocean, as pp have pointed out. As a teacher I would absolutely not be willing to volunteer for PTA events in my own school.

When it's going well, it is enjoyable, it's rewarding.

It has got a bit easier due to a couple of people leaving though, I didn't realise how much they brought everyone down with their negativity.

Well done on monies raised. We found same it ran well in my daughter's school but same people doing things. Very few parents got on board. Disheartening. I did around 2 yrs I had enough then lol

We had such fun on The PTA, never laughed so much BUT it could be very stressful and frustrating at times.
I think it depends who else there is, I think I was lucky that we had a very supportive and generally nice group and the SLT were fantastic as well.
I did't experience and of the horror stories you hear about The PTA

That’s such a good idea to partner with a company like that.. might have to do more thinking along those lines!

I did seven years of very active PTA work at my son’s primary. Led on many different events and activities, it was hugely time consuming and stressful at times - uniform sales, Christmas sales, termly cake sales, world book day events, topic based visitors, Santa etc.

I was also working, and there were so many parents who didn’t work who did nothing at all, their kids always loved the events but they always felt the need to give ‘constructive feedback’. I appreciated the feedback, but it was always the case that to put the feedback into effect, we needed more helpers. And I always felt that the school’s attitude was fairly apathetic towards having a PTA on the whole, but the head always stated that she was 100% supportive even if it didn’t always feel like that to me.

My breaking point was a time in y6 (when I’d already done 6.5 years of events etc) when I realised that I couldn’t run the termly cake sale that I’d committed to as I had an event at work. School could t change the date, fair enough. I roped in one of the other parents of a child in DS’ class, who had done very little previously, but was willing to lead it. Cake sale went well, hurrah.

The head, for the first time ever, publicly thanked her, by name, in the termly newsletter and praised her in the most golden terms. She’d never ever mentioned anything I’d done, even though I’d done it for years and in exactly the same way. It was a real kick in the teeth. I wasn’t in it for the thanks, it was enough that the children got so much out of it all. But I thought at that stage, fuck it. And I didn’t look back, it was a massive relief.

@WhoWhereWhatWhy that's really pants, that would annoy me too!
But the head does thank us in newsletters for what we do.

Did you ever escape, OP???