To ask why you don’t volunteer for school / PTA / Parent Council Events?

[whyismykid]

Is it because you are too busy? Don’t think it’s important? The people who organise these type of events are irritating? Think the school have all the funds they need so it’s not worth the bother?

What would enable you (or persuade you) to help out?

200 people attended the event I planned today and had a good time but only 8 people volunteered to help. I understand that the planning and preparing for events is time consuming (it totally is!) so I’d only expect a small number of people to be able to take that on, but it should be different for on the day help I would think? I made sure each volunteer slot was only 45 mins long, so that people could also take part with their families, and made it clear what each volunteer job involved. Online sign up
so super easy.

What else can I do? it’s a school of 750 pupils and I have a summer fair to attract volunteers for next, any ideas?

I was at a school pta thing today on my own with my 4yr old. No way could I have volunteered and kept him safe st the same time.

@RupertBear15 “church “ property is often doesn’t work like that, it’s a much more complex system.

I work full tome, and I really hate the "if no one volunteers there will be no summer fete" messages that get sent out. I don't actually care if there's a summer fete or not.

^^This!! Sums up the feelings for pretty much everyone I know

There are so many judgey 'all these 'taker' parents whose children benefit from this but don't help' comments on here. There are other ways of helping, you know. I donate tons of uniform, toys, books, cakes etc throughout the year and easily spend upwards of £250 at events organised at our school. Without this type of help, the PTA would be redundant.

Because I work ft in a demanding job and the idea that therefore my evenings and weekends are free is frankly hilarious
I’m also studying which takes up more time for a role I volunteer in at a charity.
I’m introverted and HATE going to school events. I do not want to fill my house with tat I feel obliged to buy. We are bombarded with healthy eating messages all year by the school then asked to donate jars of sweets for the stalls and prizes....
As others have suggested I’d happily make a donation to the PTA each year for all the tedious events to stop!
My child has swimming by lessons every Saturday morning, because we both work ft she can’t go after school during the week.
My ‘free’ time is extremely limited. Life is extremely short. I have friends and family I like to visit occasionally and I’d like to spend time with my DH and child during the tiny amount of time we have free. They are treasured relationships which need time invested in them.
So, there isn’t anything you are doing wrong, it is that, I just don’t want to spend my time doing PTA work. I’m not a taker, as I rarely turn up at these events. I’m usually working anyway...5pm on a Friday evening for a themed BBQ just isn’t possible. I’m still at least two hours away from home (at work). Plus after a full week, I want, no, make that NEED to relax....not feel like I’m networking.
Sorry, but we aren’t all the same and at my age I’ve stopped trying to please others, I care not what is said about me by others. I have little in common with other parents other than our children were born at the same time and go to the same school. I have friends, I’m sure many of the parents are lovely but I don’t have the time to invest in more friendships, so I cannot see the point.
A bit of a rant, so sorry but you asked

Because I'd rather give actual cold-hard cash than become part of our PTA. So I do. The passive-agressive "no fun on the field last year, what can you do to make it happen this year?" poster was the first time I realised that it hadn't happened.

I think that more money would be raised for the cause just by asking for it rather than pretending that we want to hang out with other parents for "pamper evenings" and bingo (for which baby-sitting needs to be arranged/paid for) , or taking time to bake cakes that will be sold for less than the cost of the ingredients. (How does that make anyone feel valued?).

The more you volunteer for things, the more management thinks that things can be run without enough paid professional staff. A lesson I learned the hard way through the library service.

@whyismykid Because members of our schools PTA are extremely cliquey. I have helped at around 10 xmas/summer fayres and they are badly run. The main members give themselves the "best" jobs in the same places every time and one year i was stood around feeling awkward for AN HOUR before they gave me my job. So After 3 years of my DD being at the school I stopped.

I work Monday to Friday.
They have their meetings at 10am when I'm working.
They have one at 6pm but thats when my dh is comimg in from work and I'm sorting tea.
I have a house to run.

I do however try to support all events by either attending or handing in donations etc my ds takes part in all the fun days/ dress up days to raise funds

The PTA at my secondary school don't have much physical support, but they raise a decent amount of money by asking parents directly to donate to a specific fund. Or something like a big raffle every few years (not every year because the local businesses who donate prizes wouldn't be able to donate that regularly), with prizes like afternoon tea at a cafe, haircut, paintball session, etc. The kids take one book of raffle tickets home each with the message that they can either sell them or bring back any unsold tickets. I think a committee of about 3 parents and 2 teachers organised that and raised significantly more than has ever been raised by school fairs/uniform sales/other events.

Another popular fundraiser is a band night. So any kids who play in a band pay a nominal amount to play (I think we only charge £1-2 per band), their parents and friends come to watch for a small amount (£3-4 ish). Loads of parents are happy to get involved in ticket sales because they're going to be there anyway and they don't actually miss the event because they're helping.

Time - work FT hours in 4 days, single parent and would have to get a babysitter to enable me to go to evening meetings (which they all are).

Also the committee are expected to donate so much themselves, I.e items to make up a hamper to raffle off. Why should they?!

Because I work evenings and weekends around my partners job, and I’m exhausted tbh I couldn’t take anymore on. I used to help with class reading but can’t afford the childcare to do that anymore.

Because I don't want to.
Don't want to go to the events either
I work 6 days a week with Sundays being my only day off.
I'm struggling to keep all my plates spinning without extra stuff.

I’ve got better things to do with the precious free time I have than spend time at school events. Sorry, I find them tedious, boring and most of the time full of naff stalls.

Because I don’t want to.

I have five children and have been taking them to and from primary school for 22 years so far. Managed to avoid the PTA.

I have often handed over £20 and then not gone to the school fayre probably cheaper than going and more fun for me.

Forgot- I choose to volunteer with scouts,my running club, parkrun and junior parkrun. School pta doesn’t interest me probably due to the members.

The manning a stall while having your kid there only works if you've got some types of kid - the parent who manages to do that at ours has the most beautifully behaved, sensible daughter going and can pull it off as her child is so sensible people will gladly "supervise" her as she's so level-headed it's like not having a second child to keep an eye on anyway! (Lovely lovely little girl - nothing negative to say about the child at all) In contrast my kids I couldn't do it with - DD1 in particular can be hard work when remotely excited - wouldn't be fair to expect anyone else to deal with that - normally we either go to the early part of an event and then DH takes the kids home while I stay on, or DH takes the kids and I just do the stalls and occasionally make suitably-delighted noises when they come by to show me the latest sweetie they've won off a game stall.

Funnily we get a load of dads volunteering to do the "I am man, I create fire" routine for the summer barbecue. What the fuck is it with penises being magically attracted to outdoor cookery on slightly dubious cooking equipment?! Not many men come to meetings apart from the AGM (which has a huge turnout) but when the rota goes around there's usually a fair few men who volunteer for stall stints or hoiking tables around to do event setup and tidy up.

Meetings all on an evening incidentally and they tweak the time to try to suit as many people as they can in terms of around work hours, childcare etc. Lots of organisation and discussion on FB groups as well if people can't make meetings and we try to make sure we don't clash with events on at the other schools people tend to have children at (we're just an infants so obviously work around the linked junior school events and try to keep an eye on the secondary as well).

I just don’t want to, I’m not going to give any excuses, I just don’t think I’d enjoy it and I don’t want to spend my time doing it.

I don’t want to give money either, I’ll happily pay for trips and extra curricular things for dd but schools are supposed to be funded by our taxes and if we start paying for books and equipment through PTAs then it lets the government get away with underfunding them and saying but they don’t need more money, look they’ve got everything they need.

I think it's ridiculous to call those people who don't volunteer selfish and takers. I volunteer in a charity shop a couple of hours a week. I also give to British Heart Foundation. But do I come on here and call those who don't do what I do selfish and takers? No I don't, because I understand that there are millions of good causes and ways of spending time helping others, and everyone has the right to choose their own way of giving back. People should stop putting their beaks in other's people's lives.

The big difference being that you do not get the benefit of other peoples volunteering in a charity shop in quite the same way as a PTA.
A PTA provides the 'extras' that ALL the children in the school benefit from. In our school that ranged from Netball /Football team strips. An allotment area, Musical instruments, New Playground Equipment. Yet many parents of children who reaped the benefit refuse to contribute even an hour of their time. That is 'taking' what ever way you want to spin it.

I volunteer. I work FT and our school is very mixed in terms of parental income. It's feast or famine and quite often I end up being the 'voice of the lower income parents'. I fundraise privately and now have a team of 10 parents. We target big corporates and charitable foundations rather than parents.

Our events are geared towards the low income families. At Christmas we do a massive party for the whole district and the kids have a chance to have their picture with Santa plus get a gift. School trips are fully paid for and performances by the theatre department involve 100+ kids and are fully funded by us. I'm trying to push for all kids to be taught swimming and skiing in the next couple of years.

Op you have to manage the roles and break them down so it's no more than 10 hours a month. Every single family with young DC have very limited time available.

I volunteer if there are timed slots so I can sign up for an hour. Otherwise, I get stuck for hours and it’s impossible to handle two small children.

rainbow Men are attracted to fire which is why they love to BBQ. Call it an oven and they run a mile.

Cliqueyness. Ours is the same people whos kids win every competition even though other kids know they did better. The ones that stand gossiping st tthe hates so you have to go on to the muddy grass with a buggy. The ones who kids have parties and exclude other kids based on disliking the parents not their children's relationships. I have zero desire to mix with that group of people. I support events as best i can without active involvement.

At the gates. God i hate this stupid phone

For me it’s because I work odd hours (emergency services) and am on call 1 in every 4 weeks for seven days. So if the pager goes I’m off in less than five minutes.

Whilst I would love to help and have offered, there’s no guarantee that I could continue if I got a page. Understably people don’t want that when I do offer.