What puts off parents from joining PTA

[idlemum]

Would really like some feedback on others' experience of fundraising committess. We don't have a PTA as such but a 'friends' of the school. My dd is now a yr2 and I joined the committee when she started in reception along with a couple of other mothers. Since then we have had one new member last year and none from this year's batch of new parents. There has been criticism in the past that the committee is seen as 'clicquey'. This may or may not be true and has usually surfaced when we have tried to find out why certain events are not popular or why no-one comes to the AGM etc. We think the criticism may have been fair for some members in the past but not now. We will all speak to anyone and genuinely welcome any ideas.So what I am trying to find out is what type of actions/behaviours give rise to this impression. (Or is the impression just an excuse for not getting involved?)Has anyone had experience of this or indeed has anyone felt they couldn't join a 'pta' for similar reasons.
Hope this request makes sense as it is the first thread I have started being new to MN.

I agree some people can be unapproachable and it can seem like a closed shop to some people. I'm just thick skinned and confident so I went to the first meeting and starting saying my piece from there. I'm entitled to pipe up with my opinion so I did.

Our PTA meetings are at teh local gym - in one of the meeting rooms right next to teh bar. They are in the evening, we wind up between 9 and 10pm and get thrown out somewhere around midnight.

We are a new committee and definitely tried to 'market' the meeting as a get-together as much as anything else. For the first time ever, we got a group of dads and we had a right laugh after the meeting.

The Ceilidh we are organising is in our local church hall - it's a brilliant night and last year we raised over £2K. There are people laughing in our faces like 'why would we go on a night out to the church hall?'. Ooooh, well get you. You don't mind your kids sitting on the nice new carpet we worked so hard to pay for, and you didn't pull them out of the trip to The Bridgewater that we also paid for. And do you say 'oooh, no, please don't help yourself to drinks from the water cooler whenever you want to darling, the PTA bought it'. I could go on.

I KNOW that our PTFA isn't run as well as it could be, and I KNOW that we've been accused of cliqueyness before now.

Thing is I'm a mum of 3 (in two different schools now), work 25 hours a week, heavily involved in both the cub group and the sports club they attend, with a DH that works daft shifts (he's also Chair of Governors, ooh how cabalesque), and I'm basically too knackered to do things right.

The Chair of the PTA is erm, there as a figurehead and does little other than pontificate, the Treasurer is virtually non-existent, and most of the organising is done by myself and the head-teacher's wife (whose children have long since left).

I may not do thing right, in fact I know I don't do things right, but I do send a PTFA letter out most months, and I do rely on those I know will "do" for us. I'd love to ask new people to get involved, but frankly I don't have time for the rejection.

Having said all that, we do ok for a small school, but with a little bit more support we could do so much more.

But each to their own I meant to add at the end, lol.

There are people that genuinely cannot cram another thing into their schedule, or don't want to - and that's fine. Plenty of people are too bloody idle or just don't give a shit. Even that's fine, but don't turn your snotty nose up at those of us busting our balls to provide extras for all of our children. In fact, much of the time we are funding essentials - our school gets a lot less funding than many others because of where it is.

Thanks GDG you saved me the bother of a post.

Ha ha! Hi mate! We always meet on these threads!

Well at the moment I genuinely can't cram anything else in, my priority at the moment is working to pay the bills and spending time with the children.

My volunteering was seriously impacting on the running of our business (ex park friends association, NCT secretary then chair and volunteer website editor so am not averse to a bit of community service)

I have two jobs, my dh has 3 jobs, we have to have some sacred time where we say NO, this is family time.

I acyually think it is worse for commitees to have people who take on too much, we saw this in the NCT and I resigned when it got to the point where I was more a liability than a help.

Those of you who go on about people being too bone idle to be on the PTA - who on earth do you think attends the school's Spring Fair, Summer Fete, Autumn Fayre etc?

Who buys the raffle tickets, pays for entry to the school disco, entry to the fair etc and supplies spending money to their kids?

You might fundraise but where do you think the funds are coming from?

No I'll tell you what it is, if you honestly want to know

These ARE sweeting generalisations, btw

1. PTAs are cliquey. IME its not all THAT easy to get onto them sometimes. Lets face it, the PTA is a social thing for some people.

1. Meetings are held at difficult times and younger kids are often excluded. Also a problem for working parents unless they do 9-5 and have another parent at home for childcare.

1. There are some really scary, booming, PTA women out there who don't quite make eye contact and instead bray like a lacross instructor. They put the likes on me off.

1. We don't all want to sit in a hall and take endless decisions. I'm quite happy for other people to make most of these decisions (don't give a feck WHAT colour daffodils for st davids day) and then take on work.

so if I am honest, thats what puts me off.

I should say that at ds's current kindergarten there is a very different set up and basically, you do stuff to help or recompense them

incidentally, btw, I am far from apathetic, I am a serial volunteerer. I even made a career out of it...

But the PTA puts me right off

Lack of time. By the time I get the kids home from school and get their tea ready, homework done it it time for them to go to bed, and then I do all my marking/planning for lessons later in the week.

My experience of PTAs goes back to when I was at school and there was core group of volunteers who just liked to do the same thing every year and asking for new members didn't mean wanting to hear new ideas - they just wanted people to boss around doing the donkey work all the time.

In DD's primary school, the PTA had meetings at the end of the school day, which immediately cuts out working parents.

Thought they probably could have done with having two meetings - one for the parents who do school pickups, and one in the evening for working parents. Might have improved numbers. Had I been able to attend, I would have told them how bloody annoying cake sales are for working parents. If you're a regular baker, fine, perhaps there is a good "profit" to be turned on home made cakes. It's just utterly pointless telling working parents they can provide shop bought stuff. I'm pretty certain that makes a loss. It would be better to just hand the £3 to the PTA.

At DD's current secondary, a lot of the events they need help at start quite early in the evening, before I'd have time to make it back from work, so there doesn't seem to be much point in getting involved.

For a while I didn't get involved with our parents' association because it just wasn't convenient re timing for meetings and because I was heavily involved in other charity work, although I wasn't working.

A note came round asking for new members - as it does every year - and a friend and I decided to go for it.

It's been great - I've got to know other parents outside my daughter's year group and have been as involved as I want to be - sometimes doing more, sometimes less. Everyone on our PSA has a busy life and it's easy to pick up the bit you want and run with it and work seems to be quite easily divided. We split off into little groups to organise particular events and try to meet up over eats and drinks to make it a nice occasion.

And everything we do seems to be quite low level work even our Ball which has sold out in just three weeks and isn't until June!

We tend to get a good response if we ask for volunteers for a partic event e.g. to commit to just half an hour on the tea tent at sports day and/or to bake a cake.

I think if you're going to rely on a core of titled members to run it and aren't prepared to go to every meeting then you created that clique yourself. So separating the fundraising from the 'business' end (if your PTA has one) is quite important so non-regular people can dip in and out when it's convenient for them.

when you ask for details on numerous occasions - then when you get them along with a phone call they have enough help fuck you very much

The PTA at my DD's playschool is very much a 'friends' thing, in that the chair and about 5 other members are all friends away from playschool, their children have grown-up together and they all see each other socially, this leaves me and two others having no idea what private joke they are laughing at and being left out during the organising because they have already met up and discussed what they want to do and it is pretty much decided before they get there.

They also join together to do jobs together at fetes etc... and the rest of us get given whatever they don't want to do.

That has put me off joining the PTA when DD starts reception in September. I'm sure not all are like this but so far my experience has not been good.

I am not a shy, quiet person by any stretch but find myself just sitting there agreeing with them all as they don't really listen to anyone outside of their 'group'

FB x

Agree with so many on here - with hatwoman and orinoco about communication, with soapbox about committee "fannying around", with LucyJu and others about cliqueiness... But then I got an earful last time I mentioned PTAs on here (in the context of a poorly-spelt letter) so I'd better keep quiet...

I'm not entirely sure it's necessary to establish my credentials before I rant but I will, because I know they will be questioned. I started out interested in being a full-on active committee type person but got cut out by cliquey-ness. Despite this I help at every event - and often in preparing for them. I am one of the few people who hang around after events to tidy up. I buy every raffle ticket going.

to those of you who say "if you don;t join in don;t moan" - whilst I fully appreciate that sentiment think about your own actions too - if you dismiss the reasons people give for not joing as excuses - if you're not prepared to listen to why they don;t join in - or why they say they don't join in, if you're happy to say that really it's because they're lazy or shy, if you carry on using the same methods of getting help, then you are doing yourself a disservice and you're not, imho, really that interested in getting more help. if you genuinely want more help then you need to understand why you don;t get it and change your ways accordingly(which I think the OP genuinely wanted to know). Can you really not see that it is very much this kind of attitude that will put people off? People operate in lots of different ways - some are shy - doesn;t mean they can't contribute; some are pushed for time - again doesn't mean they can;t contribute.

In the same vein as "if you don't contribute don't moan" - if you're not genuinely interested in recruiting more volunteers don;t moan when you don't get any.

If the primary aim of the PTA is to raise money for the school, I'd simply rather write a termly charity cheque than faff around making cakes. And that's what I do - I admit that it's not very socially cohesive, but it is simple, effective and tax-efficient and whatever we give is matched by DH's employer. That's for DD2's parent-run pre-school. DD1 goes to a private school and I simply can't get my head round why you need a parent fund-raising body for that at all: if you need the money, put up the school fees; if you don't, don't bother me!

Issymum - a woman after my own heart

I'm always gutted to hand over a tray of delicious cakes only to then hand over more money to buy someone elses cakes that are not as nice as the ones I just gave away!

(Churlish or what)!

Gosh what alot of comment - thanks everyone and some food for thought. Hatwoman is right - I do want to know the 'why' as I don't believe lack of committee members is entirely down to apathy. I have to say that we do issue a regular newsletter and also put updates into school's own weekly newssheet.We never have meetings during the day because of working hours. We are a 'Friends of the School' and are a fundraising comittee rather than a PTA and the only staff member is the Head.We are lucky in that we usually get enough helpers for the 'Fairs' and volunteer cake bakers when required - and we do have some people who do feel that they can dip in as helpers at meetings rather than committee members as they don't always have the time. That said, there has been this recent lack of people wanting to be on the committee and it is worrying as we have lost some long-standing members as their children have moved up the school. Those of us who have taken on the 'titled' roles have done so on the basis that no-one else wanted to do it and may not want to continue ad infinitum. I worry that there can be apathy within the committee and I certainly remember there being an attitude in the past of not wanting to try new things - something we are actively working on changing but it takes time.

My thoughts exactly Soapbox. Am almost certain that the persons who suggest cake sales are the ones who turn up with the fabulous creations to show off. The rest of us shuffle in bearing some fairy-cakes-in-a-box things.

You pay a few quid to make cakes, give DD a quid to buy someone else's cakes and umm, let me see, I'm down a few quid, but the school gains less than I put in. Can't be right.

To be fair, that primary school was voluntary aided and did ask for about £30 a year, if you could afford it, towards the school upkeep. I would have liked the option with the PTA to give them a cheque for a further £30 and to be left alone.

lucy lu - that is exactly what happened to me last week!! I went to a meeting to help with food for forthcoming pta event - it had all been decided in advance. When I left they were all staying for coffee!

then later in the week arrangements had changed again without me being a part of it, I think mainly because they see each other in the playground a lot.

i think busy parents trying to run a group of busy parents is going to be tricky - who has the spare time and the required diplomatic skills really? I think the good intentions are there so it won't put me off

Message withdrawn

hello everyone

very interested in this, as my temporary name suggests!

keep em coming! tia