staff involvement in PTA

[Podmog]

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I'm new to our PTA so all I know is that there are always teachers, including the Head, at our meetings - always the same ones though.

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Whilst I always support and attend PTA run activities, I never attend the meetings.

The main reason for this is that our PTA hold them about 7pm once the parents have gone home fed their kids etc. This is ok for them as they are local but most of our teachers are not. I have a 20min drive and one teacher has a 40min drive so either we stay all evening or we rush home for 1/2hour then back again.

Also I think the parents relax more without the teachers there.

As I said, I give up the odd Sat morning for events and 4 fridays a year for discos but don't attend meetings.

Also, parents do all ticket selling as it's not really fair to the school sec.

I do not/would not expect teachers to do anything, in the same ways I do not/would not expect all parents to be involved.

At our school the teachers do all help a great deal - manning stalls at fetes, helping with discos, etc. (Nearly all events are immediately after school rather than in the evenings). I don't know, maybe there is a 3-line whip from the Head and they have to be there I've always assumed they all did it voluntarily as a gesture of their commitment to the school!

At ours the Heads attend meetings and there is at least one teacher rep from the infants and the juniors. They get involved in events where the children are encouraged to something - art competitions, dance displays etc - but apart from that I would only expect them to turn up if they were interested in the event. the staff usually field a team at the quiz night for instance. Tickets for events can be sold from the office, though as the secretaries are great and there is a safe!

I was (previously) one of the teacher reps on the PTA. We were advised that our role was that of support and guidance only. We were not actively encouraged to engage in the meetings, but just to answer technical questions on things that the parents did not know / could not do.

As for those not on the PTA - their input was minimal. They used to help out at the school discos and summer fete but that was about it.

The PTA sold tickets themselves.

I would expect one teacher at each event.

HTH

As far as I can tell, the pta at our school is almost entirely run by Teaching Assistants. More TAs than ordinary parents (but the TAs are also parents, too, iyswim). I think just one teacher rep usually goes to each pta meeting (almost all of our teachers are also not local), but am not very involved so can't be sure.

I don't think you can expect any involvement from teachers or TAs (except perhaps Heads and Deputies), although obviously any goodwill gestures of time and participation in PTA events are always welcome. It depends a little on the ethos of the school (many have PFAs, parents and friends, rather than teachers, as many staff already work 50-60 hour weeks without other commitments and so rarely take part), and the Head certainly can't make teachers attend any such meetings or functions. You would hope that some staff would always want to anyway.

As a teacher I struggled with PTA committees and meetings because of problems already mentioned (travel to and from work, my own family commitments/childcare, workload after school etc). I certainly tried to make special evenings (quiz nights, discos etc) and always went to the fete/fair and ran a stall, but rarely went to meetings (at my last school they were always held at a parents' house, and were a bit of a gossip fest which most teachers felt v uncomfortable with....). HTH

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Our PTA has asked if one teacher would be able to be at each event. We were given a list of all the PTA events during the year and each signed up to one or two. We all attend the Christmas and Summer Fairs.

Tickets etc. are advertised through the weekly newsletter. Our PTA puts in a flyer and return slips/money go straight to the office and into the PTA pigeon hole where they are collected by a member of the PTA.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect the office staff to be responsible for selling tickets as the office staff are always overworked as it is.

No teacher or TA attends the meetings on a regular basis, but we have a teacher representative who will attend if requested.

Podmog - what sort of things do some members of your PTA feel the school should be doing?

Would they be prepared for their children's education/safety/smooth running of the school to be interrupted while these things were administered by teachers/TAs/secretaries?

Sorry, that sounds really harsh.

If there is no teacher involvement in meetings, how do you decide how to allocate your funds? Or how do you get some sort of approval for ideas you have that are going to involve the school?

Our head makes requests for funds at the meeting but quite often the actual teacher requesting the funds comes to do it themselves so that they can give a proper explanation as to why they are asking for it and how it will benefit our children. At the next meeting, one of the reception teachers is bringing along a display of the new literacy materials being used which were partly funded by the PTA so that we can see where the money is going.

This year we (PTA) suggested that all the children design a Xmas card - this goes home to the parents and if they want to order it to be made up, they can be sent away to be produced and then you can buy them in packs of 12. We needed teacher involvement here because obviously we had to ask if this was logistically possible to do in class time bearing in mind deadlines etc.

I'm just not sure how you can run a PTA when the teachers and parents are working in isolation. Or maybe the remit of other PTAs is different to ours?

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Hmm, I don't think we expect the staff to actually run anything although they are obviously about at the Xmas and Summer fairs. This is why we asked them about the Xmas card idea because we knew it required their input and if they didn't feel it would be possible it wouldn't have been done (we all offered our time to go into the classrooms and help with making the cards too).

What your chair expects sounds really unreasonable, Podmog. I know that our PTA reckons that the teachers have enough on their plate, they are not asked to do more than a few bits and pieces.

FWIW, I've been chair of my pre-school committee for about 8 months, & we on the committee absolutely do not "expect" the staff to organise hardly anything to do with fund-raising, interviews, or Fun-Days. We are very appreciative when the staff choose to participate in something, of course. (Most of the staff are ex-committee members themselves, actually, and one is now on the PTA, too)

ps: Podmog, I totally empathise with your reluctance to say what you really think about the situation, btw.