To be sick of people assuming the PTA is full of a certain type of parent/social climbers etc

[PartyCat]

I am a single working parent with a very busy, stressful life, not your typical tiger-mom by any stretch. I am sick of the number of times I have read people on here saying something about the PTA type mums - I only did it because it is basic social responsibility and we need to raise money for our schools as they are on their knees, and no-one else would bloody well step up. There were only a handful of us (at best) who did all the heavy lifting, the rest would just turn up and everything already be organised, as if by the magic PTA pixies! I am sick of hearing about whatsapp groups about people complaining about something we did or arranged, or how it was handled. Then step the fuck up yourself and do it as it was the last thing I wanted or needed to do, and was extremely stressful. I know some schools may fit the stereotype that everyone seems to think about PTAs, but not ours. Even if the women (let's face it, it is usually women, not sure why men think they have nothing to do with their kids education) in your school do fulfil the stereotype you have, at least they are actually doing something to help their kids and YOURS. Stop carping from the sidelines and get off your arse and help out too. Or at the very least, please stop making massive assumptions about the types of people in them. Cheers!

As a Mum with dc now in secondary, we've experienced 7 schools. 4/7 are exactly as you described, genuinely hard working people, who simply stepped up to help, no cliques/social climbers/airs and graces. Just regular people from all walks of life, doing more than they had time for.

3/7 unfortunately met the stereotype, especially 2/7. The 3rd was more mixed. But the two "worst", full of parents wanting to control things and make things best for their dc. Complete abuse of power, no understanding of how typical families feel stretched, dare I say Mums will too much time (and money) on their hands. Ex. one year the head of the PTA decided there should be an additional school play for a fundraiser and offered to run it, the head of PTA's daughter was the lead (obvs) and all lead parts went to the PTA's dc. It was the worst school play I've ever seen (and I've seen lots). School should never have allowed it, they did learn their lesson and it didn't happen again.

I only have the experience of ours in our school but it is the stereotypical group.
They are a bunch of smug, know alls who think they are better than everyone else.
They never ask for anyone to help with things as they seem to want to do it all themselves.
But also many parents aren't willing to help our school because the head is a complete b*tch who has created a terrible relationship between herself and parents and doesn't even say thank you when money is raised.
I will just say, if you don't want to do it then don't, because you get no thanks, when your child leaves that school you will just be forgotten about. And particularly this year, all events will be off due to covid so hopefully you shouldn't have to do as much

I wish the PTA would just send me a PayPal link or bank account details. I may suggest that.

The PTA at my dss’ primary school were great, but were also recognised as such by the other parents. Probably helped that the chair was a childminder for quite a few children at the school, so well known as competent, straight forward and pleasant, making it impossible to invent stories about cliquey tendencies as an excuse not to help out. Just helping out with setting up immediately before events or tidying up afterwards was always accepted with grace - no attempts to force people to get more involved than they felt comfortable with.

@AlexaShutUp

Are you involved in that?

Yes.

Excellent. In what capacity?

For good measure I'll add to my previous entry that I successfully campaigned to reduce the number of PTA events in the year, and to keep entry prices down. At least once we managed to pull off getting the school to issue free tickets in advance to families that might find the cost of entry difficult, and that was kept totally anonymous. I was the treasurer but I took the view we don't need the money that badly, I'd rather the kids had a good time and the parents didn't have to worry about the money. I didn't always get my way though!