To get annoyed when parents slag off PTAs

[KittyAlfred]

I see this so much on MN. Parents saying that the PTA is cliquey, that the Mums only join so they can suck up to the teachers and gain advantages for their kids. Many people on here seem to make a virtue of doing fuck all, just because they don’t like the PTA women.

Like many parents, when DS1 started at primary I didn’t really know anyone at school. It was an alien world to me. As a working single parent with a baby/toddler as well, I didn’t help the PTA at all for the first couple of years. Then I started to get involved on the periphery. Yes sure, lots of the mums knew each other well and socialised together, but that’s not to say they didn’t still need extra people to run stalls and sell raffle tickets etc. The first few times I felt a bit nervous and uncomfortable, but I got to know people, and by the time DS2 left primary I was running the PTA myself. I have no idea if people thought I was cliquey, but I really couldn’t help it if I’d known some of the mums for 10 years by then and was therefore friendly with them! We always needed help, and happily welcomed anyone who chose to muck in.

All you anti PTA snobs seem to have no idea how essential PTAs are, and how much hard work they do. I spent hours and hours and hours raising loads of money which went directly to stuff for the kids. School funding is so poor now that our PTA money subsidised all the trips, paid for books, classroom renovation, playground equipment, visiting activities, Christmas party/gifts - you name it, we paid for it.

And yes, I probably got to know the teachers slightly better, because if you’re running a school fair then inevitably you talk to the teachers. If you’re still cleaning up the village hall with the teachers an hour after the lazy mums have fucked off home , then you’ll talk to them!

If you’re too busy to help the PTA then fair enough. But don’t slag them off, because they work bloody hard and make your child’s school experience a lot better than it would otherwise be.

Very much here for this bun fight after I've done the school run. So, placemarking.

It is ironic that a thread seeking to highlight unpleasant criticism of PTA members has shown exactly why PTA members have the reputation they do.

In my experience the people who love to whine about the PTA parents are also the ones who moan about sports coaches, and scout/brownies leaders, and the parents who support the local youth theatre group, or any other group where some parents volunteer to help do something for the good of the children.

They don't get involved themselves, but spend an awful lot of time inventing a range of conspiracies.

E.g. their child didn't get on the football team because David's dad, Frank, is a second cousin of Tim's dad, Trevor, and Trevor is on the club committee. Obviously Trevor gave David the last spot on the team even though Trevor is only the club treasurer and has nothing to do with under 11s football.
E.g. their child didn't get a solo in the school Christmas concert. That's obviously because our of the 5 soloist's one of them went to Emily, and everyone knows Emily's mother, Sally, is on the PTA so Sally must have spoken to the PTA hive mind, and got the chair of the PTA to speak to Mrs Smith to ensure that Emily got a solo.

(Usual disclaimer that there's also lots of parents who aren't involved in PTA or committees and they're nice, reasonable parents who don't think Suburban School PTA is the next Illuminati)

Often the PTA don’t need people to get involved with the committee but it is the lack of sign ups to the fetes etc that are the problem. So often to run the summer fairs etc you need at least 2 parents to do each hour for instance over 5 hours. That is 10 parents hour of a potential 50 say. Sometimes they just won’t sign up even though they are visiting the fair themselves. We’ve had parents with babies and toddlers volunteer and juggle but other parents including the dads never fill the slots and then it is left to the PTA organisers to fill them. So disheartening and baffling. These parents then be elf it when their children have lovely new books and equipment and don’t make the connection between the effort to raise the money and the nice new stuff their kids have been given. Then complain that they are being harassed to help. Now I think about to can recall years ago one parent making me cry after I’d spent about 60 hours of my own time (because no one else would volunteer) doing the year 6 yearbooks and they were moaning about the £20 it cost.

Very successful fundraising organisations don’t follow that model.

most of these very successful organisations EMPLOY staff, even if it was a on a "volunteering" basis, without salary.

When it's impossible to recruit enough parents because 90% are "too busy" to give one or 2 hours A YEAR, it's expecting a lot to expect someone to make the PTA their full time job - on top of the hours already spent organising and running everything.

@strawberriesandkreme I've never been involved in any kind of volunteering that is only one or two hours a year

PTA in the kids school are doing an excellent job. However many aren't doing it for the good of their health & expect payback in the form of roles, trip places etc for their dd... Ours is know for being incredibly cliquey & two faced.. For some parents the pta & their kids school is their whole life...

I don't like PTAs. Ours threaten that there won't be a summer fete if people don't volunteer. I would rather hand over the 20/30 pounds a year spent on fetes, discos, colour runs and them not have to go to any of them

Yes I am miserable

I do however fully support the concept of helping others to fund trips, events etc that benefit the children. I think they would be successful in taking a charitable approach.

This.

The thing I was most proud of when I was co-chair of our PTA is that we spent a lot time in trying to make parents feel that we'd be grateful for anything they did and were very inclusive. Part of this was, I think, the efforts of the previous chair who managed to convince a diverse group of parents to take on the new committee roles (vs a bunch of parents who already knew each other). As a result, we genuinely did always have enough people to help out at our activities and events.

a few years later and they simply can't get people to help out at all and if you ask around there are a lot of people who used to help who say that the attitude of the new committee members have put them off.

We recently had the begging, "if we don't get enough people coming to this fund raising social, we'll have to cancel it" messages and I couldn't help thinking that if the fund raising social doesn't appeal to people, forcing them to come is not the way forward....

The dad's are nearly as bad as the mums in our school. The PTA is full of male & female alpha types..

At our school the kids work tirelessly to fundraise for the PTA.

Imagine coming in all dressed up, giving donations, buying cakes. We're a deprived area. Only for the PTA to send out a FB update saying that "we raised a disappointing £800"

£800 for a school of 120 on a deprived council estate isn't bad at all.

So utterly ungrateful.

Joined MN just to say this as your comment has infuriarated me that much. The 'Lazy Mums' comment says everything about the type of person you are and you are why some Mums who aren't socially comfortable don't join PTAs.

Can’t ignore this one. I’m chair on ours, been PTA for all of my daughters school life. I work full time in a demanding job and my daughter does a million clubs outside of school. I have zero spare time but I do it because without parents the school has zero additional funding and when we joined it was because it would be disbanded if we didn’t take it on. Not all PTA’s fit this stereotype and I have never heard of many that do to be honest, the 8 of us holding ours up certainly are not how you describe. The only people on our PTA are working parents. Bank balance is definitely not over flowing as we spend so much to enhance our children’s school and we are always fundraising all for the benefit of the children. No one realises until they are in it how much work PTAs do, how much they fund and all for free. Other than the “lazy” comment the OP is absolutely on point.

That is absolutely dreadful.

I think you’ve proven the point that PTA mums can be a certain ‘sort’

Calling other mums lazy says everything I need to know.

in my local schools, if you volunteer for 1 slot at the Christmas fair, or 1 slot at the school disco, that's one hour of your time.

If every parent was giving away just that ONE HOUR a year, the PTA in charge of organising, scheduling and everything else would not need to ask for volunteers that year. It's that simple.

Its all the shite and pressure added on top of a career. Bake sales , I would rather schools asked for direct debit donations per month like £10-20 rather than constantly fundraising it would take the pressure off.

that you think you are too good to fundraise for your child school? Don't worry, you are not the only one 😂

can you imagine the uproar if schools did that?

Have you not read the absolute fury because parents are asked for a £1 donation?

Do you know that schools would advertise that direct debit options and welcome it, raise hardly anything at all from it?

Absolutely well said. Also the parents in the PTA are looked down on as not "caring about their dc's education enough to muck in". If your face & address don't fit you're not welcome anyway.

I was chair of PTA its likw a part time unpaid kob and its always parents who ever conttribute anything that moan and complain. I gave up after a year.

Typos.....sorry

LOL at tall poppy syndrome

some of the other parents are probably doing jobs that actually save lives, you know? Surgeons, nurses, firefighters...I seriously doubt they are boiling with awed resentment at Molly from number 11 and her perfect buttercream layers.

OP, you are a living embodiment of the problem with PTAs. No wonder most right-thinking women run a mile at the sight of one of you bustling over.

I agree with you OP. If people don't want to join a group that's up to them, but constantly slagging them off and stereotyping them is unfair. I've seen horrible comments on here about people who volunteer at their church: 'busybodies' 'nothing better to do' etc.

Where I live people are constantly moaning that the Residents' Association isn't doing this, that or the other; ignoring all the good things they do and never offering to help out with anything.

Ours did after lots of people said the same thing. Only 2 families out of 300 signed up