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

One woman (kid in same class as mine) decided to set one up in my kid's school. She isn't my type of person. I find her loud and bullish. While I support the fundraising initiatives, she wants certain the school to start up certain things which are things I don't agree are necessary or wanted by other parents, mainly for the school to introduce every free scheme available. I steer clear of it all now and delete the numerous messages.

Yes really. I didn’t make any of that stuff up. Parents have absolutely felt pressure to donate and have gone out to buy new things for it.

And there is the problem - ‘get up off their arse’ as if mums not in the PTA are lazy or something.

@FurForksSake actually yes....a quick Google shows they have gone up a bit and seem to vary from £1.75 to £2 ish.
Depends what ones you buy.
Although according to Google Waitrose have Angel Slices at 94p 😱

We all need to do our bit. It’s quite simple really. I did four years then nothing, no guilt at all for not helping now!

I’m already volunteering elsewhere as is my husband (he’s been out for four hours tonight doing it, three hours last night, more later in the week), we work full time and I’m chronically ill. Within the organisation we volunteer within (yes, we run scouts) we have a fundraising team and the focus is for grants, business sponsorship and events that cost as little as possible (volunteer car parking, jumble sales, car boot sales, table top sales, tuck shop at the free disco) and the funds are used to provide uniform / subs / camp costs for those that can’t afford it.

I was on the PTA at my previous school. We ran discos after school the kids loved, film afternoons and the dreaded annual fete.

I HATE the PTA at my new school with a passion. They are rude and cliquey. There are near daily requests and it’s always complicated and difficult for working parents - and disadvantages our kids. Because no ones 5 year old is really entering a flag themed baking competition on a Friday themselves - but it’s too late to do the previous weekend. The fetes are super try hard and dreadful and it’s overwhelming and stressful.

I should have gone to Waitrose 🤣 Luckily they were for me, I was celebrating a very high grade on my post grad essay I thought I’d failed. There has to be some cake related joy.

I am amused we are debating the price of cake 🍰 🤣🤣😄

I don’t hate the PTA. I joined ours when we moved to a village and my children went to the Primary school. I did lots of volunteering and attended most events and made a lot of good friends. The PTA raised a decent amount of money for extras at school.
I do know of other PTAs that are very cliquey and unwelcoming though, and not everyone has spare time to attend.
Edited for an omission

It's a 9 pack too 😂😂
Bargain.

i think they are a good thing and I am glad people volunteer but some of them are a bit annoying & power hungry.

We have this as well as PTA fundraising. The school asks for a voluntary activity fund annual donation. It means the children get lots of extra activities, theme days and resources for lessons they wouldn’t have had otherwise. The PTA do fundraising events too and raise money for school equipment or anything else needed. I recon I give around £300 a year to the school in total. I’m happy to give this, our school is great, doesn’t have an equipment shortage and has so many activities and events for the children.

The thing that bugs me is there doesn't seem to be any consultation about what they actually do with the money raised. They are always buying bloody ipads while the school has ancient and crap sports kit.

DC's school barely has a PTA. For a while, they ran a weekly draw. But that was it. DC has been at the school for 4 years and it was only in the first year that they did a Christmas fayre. Up to last year they did small things like a sweetie or bake sale at the end of the day. But even that has stopped now.

Thing is, I would have happily volunteered to help out. But the mums that did it were such a stereotype of PTA that I wouldn't fit. And I suspect most other parents felt the same.

Yeah our summer fair a couple of weeks ago was purely to raise money for ipads.

I think having a PTA can be a blessing it just depends on whether the right people are running it.

Ultimately it’s about raising money for the school. My friends kids are at a school with a PTA that does nothing. They have no money. At my kids school the PTA were amazing and raised tons of cash for tablets and play equipment, books and so on.

You’ve said everything I wanted to say but better than I could.

Everything that the PTA organise takes time, and I do not HAVE time. I have money - when they had an open donation point on the school app, I gave generously and happily - but I do not have time to paint children’s faces or run a Tombola or sell sweets at an evening disco or stand outside the school selling cakes or ice creams or hot dogs or whatever else at 3:30, and I resent losing my precious weekend time - which is short, once we’ve factored in chores and kids’ hobbies - to shuffle round an overheated hall paying money to win back stuff that’s shitter than what I donated to the stall in the first place. I also am not prepared to use my precious annual leave up so that I can leave work early to help at evening events, many of which start before I’m even home.

In short: I don’t hate you, but please let me give you money and don’t expect me to do stuff.

As a parent and a teacher for me it’s about the superior and cliquey attitude. On my dd first day of school I was able to pick out a PTA mum just by how she was acting. Sure enough she is the one on the WhatsApp who has regularly thrown grenades into the group then sat back and watched it all roll in.
As a teacher at my current school the PTA are a God send. They go all out for our children and do a fabulous job of making everyone feel included. I’m currently in a very small school so that may be why as previously I’ve felt as above even as a teacher in the school. Watching new parents being asked to join only to be left on the sidelines if they don’t match the criteria of the mean girl mummies.

Having worked in schools for a long time, I've seen some lovely, inclusive and welcoming PTA's who make a meaningful contribution to school life and work hard to put on events that the kids really love. I've also seen some PTA's that are just absolute magnets for drama and pettiness, where very little is achieved. The latter tend to attract women who complain that "it's always the same handful of people who volunteer" but then seem to go out of their way to be cold, unwelcoming and dismissive of anyone outside their own social circle who tries to get involved.

I think it is because it is a special event at a special time of year and their children enjoy it, even if they don't.

I get a bit cross because ours bully parents into giving them vast amounts of money by doing things like selling high priced tickets to see your own kids show or selling your own kids craft back to you, or running an event where you sponsor your kid (so you cant disappoint your kids by refusing to tip up the money).

Then they don't engage with parents about how the money is used & spend it on things like expensive tablets, when most parents want less screen time in school, not more.

This is a really good post. And I don't hate the PTA, I just find it very hard to get involved in the way they seem to want people to get involved.

You need to be on the committee to know what is going on and when, or make any suggestions at all. But if you are in the PTA 'volunteer group' you just get pass ag messages about how its not fair to leave everything to members of the committee. When they have failed to fill the volunteer rota, because they changed the date of an event at the last minute. Again. (And when you do turn up there are plenty of people there helping out already!)

This point you made summarises this perfectly: "either you accept lots of people that can only come occasionally or you only take a few people who can commit to a lot. It's up to you." Our PTA just don't appreciate this tension.

Which brings me to my next point....

I strongly agree with this: 'They are all SAHMs and very competitive about who has the most children'

I was simply unaware of the school hierarchy that puts mums who had put the most children through the school being at the top. And I have an only... So there's not much I can do about it.

So join the PTA and voice an opinion? I don't help with events (I am disabled) but I very much go to committee meetings and speak up about how funds are spent.

All the requests come from the school though. We don't initiate spending ideas. Or rather we occasionally float ideas past the head and he takes them back to the staff to consider

This... will they please stop buying more fucking screens.

I'd rather they subsidised music lessons, or paid for a chess club or bought sports equipment or art supplies, the bits of a rounded curriculum that isnt in league tables so gets neglected.

I did join the pta and gave a view and got a sob story about funding shortages and how they desperately "need" the ipads.

I always find the lazy stereotypes about the PTA a bit frustrating.

My kids have left school now, but I was on the PTA throughout primary. Most of us, me included, had demanding jobs and busy family lives. We volunteered because we wanted to make the school experience better for all the children. The biggest fundraiser was the Christmas Fayre and it was always around my husband’s birthdays. Every year he’d come in late from his hospitality job, stay up til 2 am baking for the Fayre, and then be at the school for 8 am organising the catering for the Fayre. Including on his 40th birthday! No one does that just for their own self interest.

We organised events, raised funds, and spent countless hours planning things like the P7 leavers' celebrations. Including in years when none of us had children in P7, because it wasn't about our own kids.

The irony is that PTA members were often the ones making sure there couldn't even be the appearance of favouritism. I was usually the one rushing in at the last minute after escaping from work and sitting at the back of assemblies and shows. Our children certainly weren't given preferential treatment, picked for things, or handed prizes. If anything, we were extra careful to avoid even the suggestion of it.

So yes, the PTA. Those terrible women (and men!) giving up evenings and weekends, for free, to raise money and create experiences that every child got to enjoy.