Why do you hate the PTA?

[Rororo1]

I am part of a group of parents who are in the process of setting up a PTA at our primary school. When I mentioned this to a friend, she went on a long rant about how she dislikes the PTA at her child's school, and I feel like hating on the PTA is a common thing.

If you dislike your schools PTA, please can you tell me why? So we can try to avoid doing whatever it is that seems to make PTA groups so unlikeable 😅

Also please vote:

You are being unreasonable - I have no hard feelings towards the PTA at my child's school

You are not being unreasonable - I have negative feelings towards our PTA

Totally agree with this. I don't particularly like the events and trying to remember what I need to donate for them and when they are etc etc. I'd rather give the school a chunk of money at the start of the year. But at my DCs school there are definitely quite a few kids who don't get Santa/cinema trips or easter eggs except from PTA events.

There's a really sweet one at Christmas where people donate all sorts of unwanted gifts and the kids can buy them for £1 and wrap them up to give their parents a present that the kids would never be able to afford otherwise.

I don't hate our PTA at all, my only niggle is that a lot of their events like discos aren't particularly SEND-friendly (which I do get as they are volunteer-run) but non-PTA parents aren't allowed go to the event to support their DC, they are always strictly drop and run.

Yeah it’s probably something to do with DBS checks needed. And they don’t want too many parents there.
But if your child has SEND it may be worth a chat.
We do silent discos for lower years as find it more SEND and little one friendly!

PTA could try a silent disco if the parents would support it by buying tickets

Definitely! MLM should have NO place in schools. Sadly, it’s a major source of recruitment. A teacher at my kids school got sacked for using school data as a target list for her Arbonne scam back in the day. Absolute joke.

Part of the reason I joined the PTA was just to make sure no MLMs could get involved!

I am researching defibs and came across this thread.

Of course the school wanted the defibrillator not to be open to the general public. Security? Makes totally sense why they declined your offer

If it was on public property then the school couldn’t have purchased and installed

I hate mine because it’s a lot of faff for not a lot of results.
The PTFA in our case is always “raising money” but doing it in the least effective way possible. I was on our PTFA for 3 years and I saw firsthand the cliques that had formed with the “inner circle” being the officers and all the rest were general members. The general members were only given things to do that benefitted the inner circle, led by the chair, who was formidable.
I tried to suggest cheap/easy things (a school disco, a cake sale/cake raffle, own clothes days etc) all of which would be either very cheap or totally free, and got sniffed at. I was told my ideas weren’t welcome and they were “totally shit”. I was also told to not bother speaking up if that was all I contributed.
Then 2 days later it was “let’s do a mufti day” and everyone fell over themselves to tell the chair what an amazing idea it was and maybe we could theme the clothes to the classroom colours. (Of course my son got purple, which he has nothing in)
Our PTFA also “organises” the Christmas fayre, by which I mean I end up pulling the banner out and changing the vinyl lettering, I advertise for stalls, I beg borrow and steal everyone’s Christmas table clothes “to make it look Christmassy” and plead with the local florists to come and do a wreath making class. Another general member would buy in the food/drinks, make the mulled wine and get all the snacks. Someone else would get all the prizes and gifts for Santas grotto. The chairs DH was “persuaded” to be Santa. (we had to keep him stocked up on mulled wine ALL DAY LONG) and someone else wrapped everything. Then the chair and the rest of the inner circle would stand around looking smug with fresh lipstick and mascara, blithely handing out tickets to Santas grotto, whilst the rest of the general members ran around like blue arsed flies trying to stop two local bakers killing each other and keeping Santas wineglass topped up.
Just a total screaming nightmare….

@ToffeeCrabApple

to be clear… in PTA meeting, someone said this to you

I was told my ideas weren’t welcome and they were “totally shit”. I was also told to not bother speaking up if that was all I contributed.

It sounds like being on the PTA isn’t for you

Yep. That’s what they said.
Hence why I said “I WAS on” I’m not on the PTFA anymore because it’s too much stress

In front of the entire PTA meeting someone said your ideas are “totally shit” and not to bother speaking. Right

I work in education in an advisory role with many different schools. Sometimes there are misconceptions about PTAs arising from a lack of understanding about their structure and the regulations they are governed by. PTAs are charitable organisations and are a separate legal entity from the school - they don't come under the school's governance and are independent from school and from school staff. Any PTAs with an income of over £5K (most of them) are registered charities. This means they have a legally required governance structure, and a constitution they are required to work within. There are rules about how funds raised can be spent; for instance they cannot spend money on costs for which the local authority is responsible. They cannot raise money ostensibly for one thing and then spend it on something else. Etc.

On paper it is all great with clear decision making pathways. The PTA officers are the group's charity trustees, and legally have the final decision on how they spend their money, In practice I think this can sometimes appear from the outside like a few people making all the funding and event decisions while other volunteers are sidelined. But that's built in to the legal organisational structure.

In theory a PTA should consult with the school about what is needed and how funds should be allocated. Some PTAs do this really well, with others I have come across situations where it is practically war between the PTA chair and the Headteacher.

Personalities make all the difference. Like any small community organisation or charity, a PTA is made or marred by the people involved in it, and by their working relationships with school staff and with other parents. I have certainly come across 'PTA mean girls' over the years - certain women seem to make it their identity/substitute career and like any group it can get cliquey. I am sure there are also PTAs still operating on a SAHP model who are inconsiderate to working parents. And there are those where the PTA officers don't understand their own governance and organisational parameters very well. But I've come across others which provide a really positive experience for those involved and some legendary annual events. One or two personalities in this sort of group seems to make all the difference to whether the group is a force for good in the school, or a negative and scratchy experience.

For anyone interested, PTAs have an umbrella organisation 'ParentKind', which has a lot of useful info, ideas and resources for how to run a PTA well: https://www.parentkind.org.uk/the-ultimate-pta-guide-to-governance

If they did speak to you like that I hope you reported them to the head teacher or whichever teacher was the PTA liaison.

If it was during a meeting… presumably the PTA liaison and indeed all other members would have witnessed this exchange!

I really want to be on my son's PTA when he is in school precisely because I'm an Operations specialist with lots of events experience, lots of background in the education sector and in the charity/fundraising sector too.

Not to disparage other volunteers, but from my experience, sometimes "available" is all a volunteer has to offer.

Not necessarily.
For the PTA I was on teachers rarely came to meetings because they were either during coffee mornings at school and the teachers were teaching or out of school at a cafe or pub.

They complain about a lack of volunteers
They also complain if you do volunteer but only occasionally

When I did help out I offered feedback - they'd collected money for one cause but wanted to use it for another which I didn't feel was acceptable - and I was shouted down in a very patronising way

I don't help anymore

They seem to enjoy complaining about no volunteers whilst making it miserable for others to help out

Yep, down the local. We were told of volunteer opportunities with the PTFA, but it was nothing to do with the school, more of an official mums group of women helping to fundraise for the school. So I went. Turns out the PTFA where we live can call themselves that even if they’re not official, if there is no PTFA.
After 3 years of taking their shit I left. I thought I was doing good for my children but it was making me more stressed and knackered, so I threw in the towel and just never went back to a meeting.

The pta liaison teacher I’m referring to here

So it wasn’t an official body just a bunch of parents but they were able to arrange 2 day mufti days, Christmas fayres , school discos, raising money for the school? Weird they didn’t have an official PtA doing all this

Yes me too !
Obviously every school is different but the way it worked at my daughter's school was the PTA had the meetings and the Chair would then have a separate meeting with whichever staff member was the liaison to discuss anything.

Because the woman who took over ours was clearly on an ego trip, who tried to run it like she might a city firm, (verging on bullying), she had no concept of children with SEN, even though the school was meant to be SEN friendly and she had no understanding of the ethos of the school when it came to things like walking not driving to school (all pupils lived within walking distance). She was a shocker.

Ours was very clichéy. Tried to join and make an effort. Turned up to the school for a meeting to find they'd rearranged the venue and hadn't bothered to tell me. Decided not to bother after that.

They hadn’t bothered to just not tell you? Ie absolutely everyone else was told the change in venue @user1471497170 ?