AIBU to be baffled a mum had no idea the school fayre was happening?

[xAwaywiththefairiesx]

Today my daughter's primary school had a spring fayre after school on the school field. Ice cream van, face-painting, various stalls with games, the usual. All arranged by the PTA to raise money for the school.
There was a mufti day today, and the children were asked to bring a donation to the school as an exchange for the mufti, something like cakes to sell or a teddy for the tombola or a bottle of wine as a prize or something.
One mum wanders onto the field after school, with both of her kids in mufti, looking around bewildered saying "What's this? Is this a new thing they're doing? Will it be every week?"

And this is so weird to me because the spring fayre has been organised for months. We have lots of emails asking for donations, several more asking for volunteers, we've had at least three leaflets home about it, and she obviously got the memo about mufti, the whole point in which was for the school fayre!

My phone own child has been banging on about it for three weeks.

How can she get so unaware? I'm not judging, honestly, I'm just baffled how it got past her.

Is it just me? Could you miss something like this after all that communication?

All schools are severely underfunded. Any teacher will tell you that.

I’m aware that all schools are struggling, that wasn’t my point.

Whilst I understand you are trying to help, all you’re saying is that these fundraiser events should be done differently. There is still the expectation that the parent contributes regardless of what sort of event the school holds. My point is, they set up all these events and special days and get the parents to ‘contribute’ towards a school trip, when that school trip could have just been funded by the parents in the first place. No matter what events they hold, parents are still having to fork out more than the £80 per child to help the school raise funds for their share of the trip.
Yes it may mean changing the event to something less costly to parents and will mean parents forking out less than having to pay for outfits, but changing the event to a cake sale of non uniform day still means that the parents are funding it regardless. Some of these parents are parents of children who aren’t even going on residential trips are then having to fund trips for the children who are by also feeling they have to take part in “whole school non uniform day” or attending fairs or some other event to “raise money for the school” so that other children can go on school trips. And whilst I completely understand the school’s point that they don’t have enough funding, the constant events are relentless and tiring and we simply do cannot / do not wish to have to remember them all.

Anyway, two of my children are now in secondary school so I no longer have to deal with all this shite for two of my children which has eased things considerably. My youngest child is in a different school where parents aren’t expected to do dress up days to fund school trips, however, the goal posts then move to something else like “raising awareness for xyz charity” where the parents are expected to donate to charities they have never even heard of. Again, although it’s now much easier with 2 children out of primary school, there is still the pressure for me/ my child to take part in such events and having to remember them all as well as contribute financially to some charity or organisation I’ve never hear of, all so my child can take part in “national awareness days” or charity awareness days or some other organisation that we have never heard of in order to not be the only kid wearing non uniform or not rocking up to school wearing red (something else parents end up having to purchase because their child doesn’t have a particular colour of clothing). Again it’s relentless and we would just rather not spend the money or have to keep up with these constant events.

It's because people will pay 20-50p per go in the tombola.

But if we can get all the decent, tempting prizes on the raffle, we can charge £1 a ticket, and people will buy strips.

It's all about maximum profit raising.

Our raffle, with it's donated prizes from local businesses and some families, is by far our biggest profit maker, closely followed by cash donations from local businesses.

The change parents are spending on the stalls, while hugely appreciated, isn't what's making the money.

“The change parents are spending on the stalls, while hugely appreciated, isn't what's making the money.”

But parents are still expected to ‘remember’ all these events and buy things from stalls to ‘contribute’ regardless anyways, otherwise we will get a thread posted about us on MN

The awareness days are nothing to do with the PTA. I know you know that and have acknowledged it, but we are all about helping the school. We don't do awareness. We do fundraising.
And as I said, it's not all parents that spend their money on fundraising. It's the wider community.

You need to feed back your (valid) concerns to the school. Less money-spending for parents, less events.

That's all you can do.

Being angry at the school or the PTA isn't going to change anything.

“The awareness days are nothing to do with the PTA. I know you know that and have acknowledged it, but we are all about helping the school. We don't do awareness. We do fundraising.”

My point is you have created a thread about someone who you do not know, have no clue about their circumstances and have assumed their relationship to a particular child as being their parent. And my point about that point is that we don’t care who has organised these flippin events and who doesn’t organise them and who organises only certain events and who organises awareness days and charity events, that we are expected to REMEMBER all this constant relentless shit when you have the PTA organising events, the school organising other events, teachers organising certain events just because they donate to a particular charity so assume every else wants to too… then parents are supposed to fund all this and remember them otherwise we get you coming on MN writing a thread about us. We seem to be going around in circles. I don’t care who has or hasn’t organised certain events. What I’m saying is your contribution to organising maybe just a few of them, then berating parents for not remembering them when they have a thousand other school events to remember that have been organised by some other person isn’t really fair.

[ . ]

OP misses point spectacularly!

You're really not in a deprived area if you're getting that many bottles of wine donated that you're putting the "shitty" ones aside for tombola - regardless of how poor your ticket pricing is. (And I'd say you're doing a massive economic disservice to the whole PTA, as well as anyone donating an £8 bottle of wine if you're putting that as a prize on a 20p tombola table, but there you are - easy come, easy go! Easy if there's enough disposable income sloshing around locally to do that.)

Maybe you should spend your time PTA twinning with an inner city school who need funds for reading books, scissors, and drawing pins for display boards, instead of berating your own parents with enough on their plate for not engaging with some farcical money-go-round to "fund" the Y6 leavers trip to Alton Towers?

When did I say we get lots of bottles of wine? We get a few dusty bottles a year. Which we are grateful for but which are not going to bring people rushing in. They are low ticket items.
When did I say we fund Year 6 Alton Towers trips?
I have said (repeatedly) that our priorities are SEND families and low-income families and that we fund things like books, classroom resources and free uniforms.
But you have decided I am in an affluent area so carry on with that. At this point I am really not arsed. Constantly defending and explaining myself is becoming quite exhausting.

As is constantly being expected to give a shit about PTA events you 100% would prefer weren't happening at all.

I'm glad 33 pages of being asked to defend a position you'd rather not be in at all has finally got you over the finish line of being in the same emotional state as that parent wandering round the playground...

Maybe do a PTA poll before then end of term on whether parents would rather chip on a flat rate termly donation to the PTA than have to come up with time & stuff for half a dozen events next year instead?

I don't blame you OP. It's exhausting watching you trying to defend yourself against these people all baynig for your blood.

They wouldn't. Tried it.

So has OP's school, as she has explained. Twice.

Why create a thread berating someone for not “remembering” or knowing about the full details of the event then!

It’s not about them remembering, it’s about being completely unaware in the first place! If they’d known about it, they wouldn’t have wondered if it was a new weekly thing, or be surprised. If they had just forgotten the date/time it would have been a very different conversation.

Because like she said, she found it baffling, curious, slightly entertaining

But fuck me if she hasn't paid the price for it!!!!

Meanwhile the poor innocent clueless wanderer mostly likely has no idea this thread has been created and is living in blissful ignorance.

While OP has been torn to pieces and told all her work is shit, pointless, annoying, unnecessary, had assumptions made about the area she lives in, been told she should just go to work and donate her wages instead even though she's repeatedly said everyone on the PTA does work, she's been given loads of unsolicited advice on how best to run events she has years of experience in, told she's probably obnoxious, a PITA, self-righteous, just doing it to look good or for some sort of status etc etc etc....

And if she or anyone else tries to defend against this barrage of insults and assumptions she's been told "well, you were mean about that lady so you deserve it" WTF?

Like a pack of bloody hyenas, you lot!

As has been explained multiple times

Too many events organised by school/ PTAs or whatever to simply remember all the details. The child may have been “in mufti” but that doesn’t mean the parent has read about it remembered about the finer details. The child may have simply said “oh btw it’s non uniform day tomorrow”.
The notifications may have been buried in between other notifications or simply may not have been received at all.

The parent may have multiple children attending schools and cannot keep up with it all.

That ‘parent’ may not have actually been the child’s parent, she may have simply been a relative of a parent who has turned up to collect the child.

The op does not know the circumstances enough to assume the person was just blissfully unaware. And yes I acknowledge there are at least 2 parents I know of that are always posting on fb saying “is it non uniform today”, “what day do the kids break up”, “what day is inset day?” Or “what day do the kids go back to school” and yes that’s annoying but I know those parents personally and they’re like that all the time. The op didn’t know this person from Adam but started a thread about her

But she didn’t find it ‘baffling’ or ‘curious’ - it was a way of having a very thinly veiled dig that someone had the audacity to know that it was non-uniform but not the fayre (into which many hours of work had gone apparently).

Anyone who is such a great organiser can surely work out the many reasons why she may have forgotten?

Again, op started the thread to berate someone else. It’s no surprise that she got the same response in return from angry parents who are sick and tired of having to be enthusiastic and remember all these events. She didn’t need to create the thread but she did.

I can’t help thinking it would have been better if she had been up front and owned it, so actually posted about her frustration instead of couching it in faux bafflement

Yes then washing her hands of a lot of it by saying “well PTAs don’t organise charity events” and “PTAs don’t organise trips to fund school events” and PTAs have nothing to do with dress up days”. I get that, but parents are expected to get involved in ALL events and remember them all. So not only are we expected to remember them all and every last little detail about them, we are expected to financially contributed and then get berated when we either don’t know or don’t feel enthusiastic about the multitude of events we get thrown at us.

Why is it "we" like I am not also a parent who has to manage all this too? On top of my job, my kids, my family, my voluntary work?

I've tried to help you. I've tried making suggestions on what you can do. I've tried to explain how things are. I really can't do any more, but please keep commenting as hopefully this thread will quickly fill up, die, and leave me alone.

I'll never question or make any observations about any passing mothers' comments again for as long as I live, you can be sure of that.

Semi-joy, I would have had even more joy if I had managed to bump into him around the hospital shortly after and been able to say: "Roger did you get my email - just checking as I don't appear to have had a response?..." 😈

I currently have 14 unread emails from my daughter’s school. They have been sent in the last 10 days. Mostly I rely on her to tell me what’s important as they usually have been told whatever is in the email long before we get it. I don’t have the time to read every email from every one. Most of them don’t actually need my attention.

Well done you for being ‘superparent’ that is perfect in every way and knows everything about every single event. For you to get involved in organising these sort of events shows you have way more enthusiasm than a lot of us. Some of us unfortunately don’t share the same enthusiasm and find it tedious.

The point is, you created a thread to slag off another person who may or may not have been the parent of a particular child. If she was a parent, she obviously doesn’t show as much enthusiasm as you in being “hands on” with these sort of events. And that’s fine!

Yes, I think she gets it.