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?

And we used to alternate PTA meetings so that sometimes they were in school time and sometimes in the evening- still got the same people coming to both......

Same here. We now meet once every other month, at a weekend, at a local beer garden. All welcome. And even our paramedic member makes it to 90% of meetings.

I did help when I was with my ex and working nights but now I'm a single mum who works ft ans never has a moment away from the children if I ever did get a break the last thing I would be doing is the pta.

I would actually quite like to be more helpful at DSs school which seems to have quite a friendly PTA, but I'm frankly afraid of getting sucked in, chewed up, & spat out the other end as a withered husk. I would like to think of myself as a strong assertive woman who can take care of herself and walk away from onerous demands with absolutely no fucks to give, but in fact I am a sucker & have spent most of the last 10 years getting sucked in to helping with organising (non-school related) stuff "it'll be fine, I'm just one volunteer and someone else is doing the heavy lifting this time" and then left holding the metaphorical baby. Which has been shit for relationship & mental health so not doing that again.

So, what works for me is stuff where I can sign up easily to do a clear and time limited task that needs to be done. E.g. Poster outside the classroom so DP or I can sign up to bring in cakes. Or (for example) - turn up at 1pm on Saturday and set out tables. Pick up rubbish afterwards. That kind of stuff. Stuff where I don't need to talk to people, or organise anything. No responsibility, no dealing with people, no emotional blackmail, no selling stuff, no buttering up, NO PEOPLE STUFF. Offer that and I can and will do stuff.

Is that actually the sort of help that is useful to those on PTAs? I realise it requires more organisation from the PTA, and that might be exactly the sort of work that you have a shortage of people who can/will do - but if not, the fact we don't need to invest lots of time/energy in tracking someone down, being able to look at a sheet and see at a glance what bits have a shortage + what fits with what we can do, does seem to work for getting a good response from us and other parents in DS's class.

I just don’t have the time or the headspace. I work, and I am involved in other community type activities. To be honest school runs and homework etc are the maximum of family life I want to spend on school each week.

If funds are needed I would rather donate money. I realise not everyone would but that’s how I feel.

I'm not sure how much clearer I can be tea with my posts. Even Bertrand is getting it

I agree if you can you should but PTAs need to recognise working families don't have the physical resources to join in.

I’ve said this many times, I’d happily write a cheque at the start of each term for £x if it meant I didn’t get the constant letters home saying dc can wear odd socks for a pound, or needs cash for blind rats, or needs 50p and to wear yellow jeans to stop stoats being persecuted in hedgehog country. Plus, any time I have volunteered for anything, it’s always the same people who do the hard graft behind the scenes, and then others take all the glory and praise. It gets old. Fast.
I donate to the charities I choose to donate to in my personal life, I’d happily support the school financially through my cheque writing, and I work full time so I’m time poor - I’d rather spend the evening with my kids than arguing, with people who are more time rich than I, about who’ll make the apple strudel for the summer fair! I’m honest about this to anyone who asks, and most PTA mums say ‘fair enough!’ If they ask me for a donation? Sure!

Bumpowder you must be much much more important than all the other working families who do help.

Or you would just rather spend your precious free time doing other stuff.

Most people are being honest why won't you?

Because the events are painful, the money is usually badly allocated and who really wants to give up their time when they work full time? I speak from experience of many schools, as I am a teacher. Worst is when the PTA organise something and then demand that teachers help out because they can't do it. Erm, no...you organised it, you run it. No other job would ask you to come in out of hours for free.

I don’t actually know if stoats and hedgehogs get along...

I have been honest. The mum's in the PTA in my children's primary school were cunts. I said as much in my very first post

I've been trying to help since DD started in September, but no one ever gets back to me. Finally been given something to help with this summer. I can't make meetings, but I can volunteer at weekends. But our PTA is a rarity in that there's more people willing to pitch in than there are jobs. Suits me helping out one or twice a year, rather than all the time.

Has the OP every come back ?

Just thinking having two events in one term - the one today and then the summer fete - sounds like a lot. Cut down on the events if you aren't getting the volunteers.

I did some small amount of volunteering at primary level- helping out at the odd school fete etc. The school was very good at encouraging volunteers, for example, they had a 'thank you tea' with cakes and scones once a year. They also had children manning the stalls for any fete so it wasn't all down to volunteers. I never noticed any clique or anything, it was a pitch in and have fun type situation. I did less than some and more than others, I also spent a blinking lot of money at every event which is not to be underestimated!

I don't do it at secondary as I'm so glad to leave my children to get on with managing their school life, and I have no interest in inserting myself in it. I work f/t and am glad to leave all that behind and turn up looking supportive if needs be.

Now not wanting to be involved because the other mums were cunts is completely reasonable .

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

Umm, because nearly all of my week is spent earning to pay bills (3 jobs), housekeeping and it's none of your business what I do in my limited free time...(some of that is sleeping?)

Times have changed, love, most of us ain't SAHPs any more....that's why you have such few volunteers....

I don't follow the 'it' s offensive' argument- it's just a fact of life that some people do have very busy lives and others not so much or perhaps more accurately, it is a particularly busy period of their life where lots of pressures and expectations are being exerted on them. I had more time to give a few years back as a SAHP but just not now!

I don't mind volunteering and I do when the school holds events.

Committee meetings - I do attend but they are often held at very awkward times of the day and with very little notice. Some parents might wish to attend but because they have other children to mind, they are unable to attend. If parents were allowed to attend and their children could be supervised in another room that would be very helpful to some parents.

What an interesting thread to read as a PTA chair (a non-cliquey, have men on board, meetings at night with NO guilt-trip on people not making it, etc PTA).

The only thing I would add has been said. We get it: people work, have burned in the past (I was!), have kids that can’t cope with helping, don’t want to...I’ve heard it all. That’s fine, honestly. But please, PLEASE, don’t talk down on us and the time we give up and complain about how things are run. There is nothing more frustrating that parents who have never once helped stand there and tell you how it’s all wrong.

And flame me for this, but you can hate the summer fete and Xmas fete all you want but majority of the kids love it. And they’re BIG money makers (combined my school makes 5-6k on those, more with match funding) and that all goes back to clubs, sports equipment, Easter egg hunts, etc.

Goldenbear pretty much everyone has a busy life for one reason or another. I work FT but I wouldn't assume I have more on my plate than others.

cliques. Put me off and never went back.

"they'd change arrangements for meetings at a moments notice because they had the free time to have a meeting at another time"

Cirikey, that happened to me too. There were various admin things that were coming up, and I felt that, together with PTA meeting, I could justify a whole day off. Bit of a luxury, but they were crying out for new different people. Mentioned how much I was looking forward to actually coming along to PTA mum in playground, to be met with lifted eyebrow as she told me that there would be no meeting that day as some regulars couldn't make it. Fair enough, but why in earth didn't they tell the community at large?

I would not have booked a whole day off if I had known, because my other admin was just a half day, and joining in was just a treat for me. I didn't have enough leave to take another day. But even if I had, and wanted to do something community minded, I think I would have chosen a different cause which I could be more sure would be happening on the day it said it would be.

OK - so the working parents haven't got time to join in.

But they're quite happy to sneer at the SAHP and make the comments about "what will they do when their kids are 18"

Then we've got the "organising events that the kids want to come to so people spend money is absolutely exploitative" shite going on as well

Oh and the idea that it's some kind of love-in between the teachers and the teachers' parental pets

...those are the sort of comments which grind people down and piss them off so much they quit doing things like the PTA to be honest.

Ours refuses, and will stand up to the school if they make requests for us to do it, to fund things that should be funded by Government and will only fund the extra things that improve the quality of life within the school - so this year it's been things like all the reading book storage being replaced, wet-playtime toys for all the classes, maintenance of the forest school area that they funded initially, playground shelter areas and the like - a load of fairly big projects (there've been circumstances meaning there was more money in the kitty than the norm this year) the school wouldn't have had the surplus to fund but that make a huge difference to things.

I wouldn't participate if the school was our previous absolute craphole academy where the head actively detested parents (and didn't seem particularly keen on children unless they slotted nicely into spreadsheet cells to be honest) and where the school seemed to be being asset stripped by the academy chain - but this school I really do think incredibly highly of the Head and teachers and community so yeah I grit my teeth and do my time on the cake stall and as much in the way of meetings as I can get around to getting to.

As for what I'll do when the kids are 18 - well I've got fuck all intention of getting involved in the PTA for the secondary school (see my previous opinion on the very iffy academy chain). So basically I'll do pretty much what I do now - the different things I've got going on in my life, of which the school stuff is only a small part of it - but I forget that this is MN where SAHP are only meant to exist as school run taxi services who lounge about scratching their arse and searching for meaning in their lives in front of Judge Rinder everyday (I'm quite partial to a spot of the Rinder though).

Teateaandmoretea,

"pretty much everyone has a busy life for one reason or another." Do they? That's simply not true though is it?