[Closed] Anyone else involved with their school's PTA?

That's the problem with committees.
They are only attractive to the type of people who enjoy committees. Which is exactly the type of person that you don't want on your committee.......because they'll try and turn it into a committee.

Self fulfulling prophecy innit.

Anyone else experienced this sort of nonsense

Yes. Exactly as you describe. Wife chucked it after four years. Chairperson was still charging about causing chaos even though her kids had left to go to high school years previously.

Read this and laughed, my wife is Head Governor for my daughters small rural primary school, only 80 pupils, but they have to fight to stay open and pool resources with the surrounding small schools.

The internal politics is hilarious if it didn't take up so much of her time, the PTA is mostly young parents that want to see the best for the school, but there are two older women who don't even have kids, they are just village busy-bodies and gossips who are rude and of no benefit at all

I also find it very disappointing that out of a school of 350 children only a dozen or so people have been remotely involved with the PTA. Is it just a reflection of todays prevailing "im alright jack" attitude?

given your description above, are you really surprised people don't want to be involved?

One of the troublemakers thought it should have been run like a business and was only interested in making money at events, not making the events fun. All very well and good in principle, but when everyone is giving their time and effort for free, you can't really go demanding people do x, y & z.
She also took umbrage at my OH when she demanded a FULL breakdown of all the figures for the christmas fair, even though a full breakdown really isnt for anyone's eyes but the committee, of which she wasnt part.
So she's now taken to being negative about anything my OH suggests, yesterday we were walking towards her in the playground and she turned her back on us when she saw we were coming! Pathetic.

I'll be glad when my OH is out of it, which is a shame, but Im sick of all the stress its causing.

Sadly nobody seems to be able to put their differences aside and work towards the greater good of raising money for the school, which is sad.

I'm vice chair of our PTA and it's nothing like that, sorry!

Nope - ours is nothing like that.
All very amicable and low key. To be fair it's driven by a very hands on and very hard working chair, which makes it a bit too easy on the rest of us, but still managed to fund raise £15K in the last school year.
No politics or agendas that i've noticed at all.

The real struggle with our PTA, which my wife is on, is getting other parents to care. If everyone, or the majority, did something very small, it would make a MASSIVE difference. But most just sit back, expect to benefit and not contribute time/effort

I'm the lead crayon/posters/flyers/drawing things bod for our PTA. We mostly meet in the pub. We are quite lucky as there are a good few pro-active parents keen to get things done. As always, we could do with some more. If there are any politics, and I don't think so, then it's largely over my head.

my wife is the joint chair of our PSA. Recent summer fayre which was very successful, but the amount of complaints received from people who didn't want to help or only showed up on the day to help was very disappointing. As above, its meant to raise money for the kids stuff, make fun days for the kids, etc but some of the population don't appear to want to do anything but complain.

Mostly, what the hell are a PTA doing using Facebook for official business? Seriously??

Everything else there is par for the course

Rachel

Getting people involved on Fete days etc is always the struggle. It's all the invisible setting up and down that's hardest. Had a couple of times when it's been just me and one other chap doing most of the heavy lugging.

Complainers just get invited to the next PTA meeting with a view to joining up 🙂

I've worked on the barbecue at the school summer fair for the past 5 years or so, but the chair (my mate) has resigned and i've not been asked this year.

I will have to buy my own beer now!!

It's not just schools, my wife was on the committee of a small playgroup and it was like the third reich ! Genuinely entertaining to observe but you can see why things like this fold - parents who are able to contribute even a tiny amount of time simply can;t be bothered and then issue demands. This is a cost neutral playgroup setup 30 years ago for the local mums, it cost about 1/3 of the commercial place up the road and is augmented with volunteers for that reason. As volunteers waned more staff needed, costs have to rise. Oh. My. Lord. The sense of entitlement was incredible. Someone took her kid out 'as a protest' - which was fine as she was the most disruptive child I've ever seen (yes - i volunteered from my lofty high horse) then sent her to the commercial place and moaned about it so much they asked her not to come back. Anyway, back to my point, there's always a subset of ar$eholes try not to let them spoil the good things, if you simply don;t rise to it they eventually give up.

allthegear - Member

Mostly, what the hell are a PTA doing using Facebook for official business? Seriously??

Everything else there is par for the course

Rachel

My experience of the various PTAs I have had experience of mirror your OP. Actually are you talking about the ex-current one I'm not involved with any more?

Maybe not as bad as your description but it certainly rings a bell.

I also find it very disappointing that out of a school of 350 children only a dozen or so people have been remotely involved with the PTA. Is it just a reflection of todays prevailing "im alright jack" attitude?

But definitely this. One woman reduced my wife to tears - she's another who does f'all apart from complain about the events (although at least she does come to events) - the particular incident was that the school put out an appeal to parents and also some former pupils for donations for the summer fete. Most was bottles, bits and bobs like that that went in the raffle but two of the FP's have gone on to become 'famous' in their own field (one sport, one entertainment) and both kindly donated something above the usual (a Team GB signed training shirt and a pair of dancing shoes as worn on SCD FWIW)

There was no way they were going in the raffle when a quick google revealed they'd get far more on ebay for the school funds but the woman in question wanted them 'auctioned' at Quiz Night (presumably so she could get them for less from a much smaller audience) and when the committee decided that they'd maximise the money on ebay she was exceptionally nasty to the wife about it.

Self before cause, always.

(and before anyone says the celebs were fine with it, in their eyes at the end of the day it was for school funds, not so someone from the school could own them)

I was a governor. Every meeting was a celebratory circle jerk followed by achieving nothing. In the run up to ofstead I made suggestions (given that I was a cqc inspector following the Same model as ofstead and had been involved in joint cqc/ofstead inspections). They didn't like new ideas and decided to carry on doing nothing about it instead. It's an ok school and the head teacher basically does it all as the pta and governors are a waste of space!

What is interesting is that all of the people who are involved are 30+, none of the younger mothers are remotely interested in helping.

Its also telling that there was a mothers day shop this year which did quite well, but the fathers day shop had to be renamed main man shop, as according to the head master, quite a lot of the kids were from a single parent family. Oddly thats had to be cancelled because nobody is able to help run it, apart from my OH, as she can't do it on her own.

Though I've managed to do both drop off and pick up today (necessity - grandparents away), the reality of the PTA kin my daughter's school is that it operates in the daytime, midweek so is only really suited to those whose lifestyle allows them not to work. Ergo, it's a closed shop.

My experience of committees was being secretary of a large cycling club. Combining managing the competing voices from the too-much-time-on-their-hands busybody old guard with a full on full time job proved too much.

I have a generalised desire to contribute my energy and enthusiasm, but have little free time and even less desire to engage in committee life again....

I'm a fan of pta committees being made up of an odd number. Three is usually too many.

Apparently the chairman (who has done nothing for the last 7 months) is now refusing to attend meetings if one of the other members is at the meeting.
I really is utterly pathetic.
Personally I'd have asked her to resign before she gets a no confidence vote (which is what there should have been a long time ago)

You are doing it all wrong with all this politicking. You just agree to meet in the pub at 8pm and get stuck into some good quality mid-week boozing. At closing time you leave with a list of stuff you had foolishly agreed to do. You then do it and fairs, film nights, discos etc happen.

Our PTA have informed us that the usual bake sale wont happen at our summer fayre due to too many allergies and no ingredients lists for home baked goods. We have now been told to bring shop bought cakes still in there boxes so we can then go to the fayre to then buy back our cakes! With that kind of logic there is no incentive to turn up and it took an entire commitee to come up with that logic.

The biggest issue we have is recruiting new members especially blokes, it would seem that a lot of them seem to think its "wimmins work". at our school almost all the active members are from the same year so when our kids leave there will be a real issue. There is a little bit of politics but because there is a greater need to support the school its left to one side. I really enjoy it and have arranged a sponsored walk along part of the sandstone trail this weekend to raise funds, got about 8 families to do it! which is a bit crap but any money is better than none and hopefully we will enjoy it!. summer fair next week so that me stinking of burgers and sausages! 😀 . We also support cancer research UK via the PTA helping them to organise stuff at the school so we really try to reach out to the community as a whole. It just a shame that there are maybe only six of us to do it as it can feel a bit crap when people critise what you are doing for not being good enough and yet contribute nothing. For me its about giving my kids as much as we can toward their education so any political crap or complaints are ignored by me!.

You are doing it all wrong with all this politicking. You just agree to meet in the pub at 8pm and get stuck into some good quality mid-week boozing. At closing time you leave with a list of stuff you had foolishly agreed to do. You then do it and fairs, film nights, discos etc happen.

The above tends to work quite well for us as well 🙂
It seems from a lot of the issues in this thread some schools have overlap between their governors and their PTA - ours are very separate and probably helps that its a pretty small school.

It is [u]always[/u] the same handful of people that help at events and turn up at the events.
Helping isn't a surprise, but even just attending? i just don't get how some people can show zero interest in the place their kids spend most of their lives.

The other issue is, as marcus says, getting blokes involved. We have a few that will help at the events, but i'm the only one on the actual PTA.
Guess that makes me the token eye-candy...

Im happy to help doing stuff with the PTA and help and talk to my OH about whats going on. But we can't both be at the meetings at the same time.
I'll often help out at one of the stalls at events and do whatever on the day.