PTA raffle-all 4 of the Chair’s kids won the top prizes

[PTAcoincidence]

There was a PTA raffle at school this week to win Easter egg baskets. There were 4 huge baskets with around 10-12 eggs in each along with about 30 smaller baskets with a variety of eggs in them. Some had more eggs than others so between 3 and 6 eggs per basket. Lots of prizes, lots of happy kids at the Easter Fayre.
The raffle was drawn out of sight before the Fayre began with the dad of the 4 winning kids removing one huge basket from school before the rest of the baskets were even made up. Eyebrows were raised but you don’t cross the PTA mums I’m told.
Tickets were £2 each and approx 500 tickets purchased in total so a great fundraiser for the PTA. The chocolate was donated by the kids in exchange for wearing their own clothes as is the norm.
It is usually the PTA kids who win competitions, get chosen for the main
parts in plays etc and lots of parents roll their eyes and accept that’s the way it happens.
All 4 kids winning the top 4 prizes though? Surely that’s highly unlikely to be random and takes the biscuit? Or the Easter eggs in this case!
My dc won something and is very happy about winning so it’s not a case of sore loser before anyone accuses me of jealousy.

If this happened at your school would you think it was fixed or just luck?

YANBU = Fixed
YABU = Luck

Raffle prizes are usually donated 🤷
Most PTAs don't buy them.

I guess if they get enough eggs donated to be able to give one to every child in the school plus still have some as actual raffle prizes then they could do that. Essentially though the aim of the raffle is to raise funds.

When I was PTA Chair the commitee did win quite a few raffle prizes but that was because we bought twice as many tickets as everyone else!
We got The Head to draw out the tickets though and once when I won the star prize I said I couldn't have it as it would look awful but everyone insisted I took it.
We were very careful not to show any favouritism though, a new comittee member tried to shove her kids to the front of a queue once and I told her very firmly that it wasn't on. In actual fact I think that sometimes our DC missed out because we didn't get chance to spend time with them at events as we were always so busy

We had similar last year. The kids, whose parents were on the PTA, were horrified because they knew they'd be talked about. The draw was legit though (done in front of the whole school) and the main reason the children of PTA members won is because while the rest of us bought a couple of raffle tickets each, they all bought dozens each to help raise funds for the school!

Our one I spent ages emailing businesses and collecting things they donated. It's a lot of work. I don't love constantly asking parents as it kind feels like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Yes that was mostly how it was with the PTA I was in.
The prizes were donated by local companies.

the PTA dad making off with the top prize before the draw, that things are more biased towards the PTA kids than usual

That's not biase though, that's outright and shamelessly fixed!

the PTA dad making off with the top prize before the draw

Didn't anyone challenge him about it? I'd have asked him where the prize went or what did he think he was doing?

You have to stand up to people like these otherwise nothing will ever change.

We had something similar at work

A 'guess the amount of sweets in this jar'

The woman who did it all-from counting the sweets to selling the tickets also made sure her ds's name was first on the form (it had random numbers and the right number was the amount of sweets in the jar)

Over 5 months (one draw a month) he won it 5 times (I mean give another child a chance!) and I was sick of her smug face when the answer was printed out and stuck on the counter and again when she claimed his prize

A word was had to the boss (who hadnt taken much notice as she trusted this woman) and she was removed from setting it up-the woman who took over refuses to allow any of her family to take part so nothing can be said about cheating (which is fine)

Now its much more random on who wins

The first woman flounced and has another job now

It was one big fix and wasnt even a secret-she openly bragged that 'what A wants,A gets'

And that included cheating

All for a jar of cheap sweets you can pick up for about £2

PTA’s get very little feedback but they do appreciate it. Suggest they publish the screenshots of the random number generator or something that they use (put them on the fb page etc) to at least give the impression of fairness. They will have a small lottery license which can be rescinded by the council if they’re not following the rules!

Our PTA often do lucky square competitions. They post videos of the random number generator and a close up of the sheets with all the numbers and names on Facebook

I joint the PTA. All of the members were honest except the Treasurer. When I was setting up the toy Tombola for the summer fair, she arrived with 2 big shopping bags and took all of the best toys. I asked what she was doing and she said it was a PTA perk and she would make a donation later. I was stunned at such blatant theft.
My kids had begged me for the toys and I had told them that they would have to try to win them like everyone else. I started to wonder what other “perks” she was helping herself to.

Schools don’t fund much these days everything event that’s arranged for children it always money what happened to to taking tombola stuff in .. world book days another one parents who ain’t that good at making costumes have to go out and buy them if they the poor kids get bullied .. whats happens to teachers and schools helpers making the costumes with the kids donated clothing and other stuff can easily make costumes

World book day is free.
No your child's class teacher doesn't have time to make them a costume. Or the other 29 kids. This has never happened. In the 90s our parents also made our costumes.
Schools have a massive ongoing funding crisis.

Where do you think a teacher is going to find the time to make 30 costumes? And if you accept that some parents ‘ain’t that good at making costumes’, why do you think teachers will all have the necessary skills?
Schools barely have enough money to provide necessary items like pencils and glue sticks for kids (some is provided out of the teachers own pockets), let alone pay for all the ‘fun’ extras.

Not that a teacher should ever be expected to help make children's costumes, I can assure you that any costume I attempted to make would look 10 times worse than any parental effort 😅

Mine would be 27 cats and 3 footballers who didn't want whiskers drawn on their faces ('oh, just go and put your PE kit on, Benjamin').

Fixed and they keep doing as no one challenges them.

I didn't find this to be a thing at state schools but the private school we attended wasn't so good. It wasn't the PTA though. More that kids from certain families (often those with siblings in the school) or whose parents were teachers at the school got picked for things or inexplicably won things. There was a puppet competition, the winner was a teacher's child. The class teacher and the whole class knew the child had not made the puppet himself as he announced loudly that his grandma had several days before the decision was made. Since they were year 1, all the kids had help from parents but it did seem a bit much.

I stopped buying raffle tickets from my daughters gymnastics as they where drawn in private ‘to save time during the event’ very suspicious to me so I just stopped