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

While the doughnuts may have been free at the point of delivery, presumably they were not paid for by the PTA but by families and others who had donated to the PTA. If you were from a poor family, however, donating for your child / children to have a doughnut would have taken up a larger percentage of your expendable income than that of wealthier families. For some families they may have donated money that should have paid for a meal.

It's not all PTAs. In fact, the PTA at my daughter's school are mostly quite nice.

However, the one at my SD's school, I avoided and I know others that have had similar experiences.

First off, they were cliquey and made it clear that I wasn't welcome when I tried to help out with events. There was an air of superiority- they were all wealthy SAHMs, some had quit high powered careers to bring up children, and I was the 20-something Stepmum- they clearly thought I didn't fit in amongst their Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies. They had a bit of an attitude towards working Mums as well, like, "Oh, that's sweet, you have a job, you know that you'll never get these precious moments back!"

Aside from that, I think people get a bit tired of the relentless rota of requests- children to wear pink on Tuesday and bring a donation for the summer fayre, please send child in with 50p to enter the talent contest, unopened toiletries to be dropped off at reception so the children can buy them back for you for Mother's Day, children to wear hats made out of a teapot and bring a tinned sponge on Friday, parents to stay afterwards and pay £5 for the family Bingo Disco which everyone will hate.

Oh and ours pester everyone to bake cakes for the fairs and loads dont sell & just get given to staff at the end or binned!!

I was on the PTA for years. In our case, the chair was invariably a bossy-boots who no-one liked, so that didn’t help. On the whole, it was really well supported by parents. But I longed to introduce an ‘opt-out’ option whereby you could give £10 a month and be excused from all of the tedious events. Lots of parents agreed with me.

Well yeah. Thats.what we find. Nearly all the requests for funds from the school are for tech.
So that taught me not to lay the criticism at the door of the PTA.

Not sure everyone does want a summer/winter fair though, I think it’s the people who join the PTA that likes these events…. I’d rather the school just ask for “X” amount of money per child per year to cover what they need.

Or they might not have been able to donate at all, but their child still got to enjoy a doughnut.

I very much empathise (working full time and chronically ill too). No judgment for me from those who can't help us. But it's a bit rich for them to judge those of us who do volunteer for what we do /do not manage to do with our own limited free time and skills.

This! If the aim is fundraising it is often very inefficient.

Schools do not have enough funding. They need the extra cash. Yes it's shit but it's also a reality. If your PTA is a charity and running as it should then it should have a constitution which explains how the money raised will be spent. At ours the teachers make requests for funding, which need to be of benefit to the whole school. This is why things like iPads are a popular request as the whole school can benefit rather than one year group or sub group.

People can choose to engage or not - completely your prerogative - but if, like ours, your PTA can raise £20k a year for the benefit of all the children in the school then that is a good thing.

Yes this is something i’ve always hated - buying something to donate to the fair or event where you could actually end up getting it back and have therefore paid for something twice. Not cost efficient and would rather just donate some money.

I do think ours do a great job and grateful they can pay for things to help the school and kids.

but I also constantly feel guilty for not being able to help.

I did finally manage to offer some help recently. Often due to work it’s impossible - but this time I felt quite glad to help. Rushed around, finished work a bit early and arrived ready…..to find all had been done and I want needed. Then a few others of the usual helpers turned up, chatted and I kinda felt pushed out.

wish I hadn’t bothered!

This was my experience also, although not everybody. Most of the women were in a clique and were the ones that would blow hot and cold at the school gates, sometimes talk to you and sonetimes blank you, which I just cba with. And if I volunteered for events, or to help, they would just gossip amongst themeselves and not really listen to anything anyone who wasnt in their cluque said, so I stopped volunteering.

I don’t hate the pta, but our pta equivalent are really cliquey. Once I volunteered to help with an activity which was (apparently) gratefully accepted but when I followed up a week or so later I was told I wasn’t needed any more and one of (insert nickname of pta) had availability after all and done it instead, but no one had bothered to tell me that, so I’ve never volunteered again

I don't hate the PTA at all, they raise loads of money for the school and do a brilliant job. I'm very glad they exist.

However, I do dislike being made to feel guilty for not being extroverted and a 'joiner in'. They attract a certain type of person and I am not it. The idea of manning a stall or game at a fair fills me with horror. I'm also (like most people) at work during many school events and simply can't be there. I volunteer at one or two school events per year - sometimes PTA, sometimes class - and that's all I can manage.

I have huge respect for anyone who volunteers their time to help their kids' school. Organising events and trying to get people to donate is really hard work, and often it's all off the back of the unpaid labour of women.

Yes, sometimes things aren't perfect but I would never begrudge someone else's efforts that ultimate benefit my child, and find it odd that anyone would

So stop giving the school a say! The school don't own the PTA. The PTA are perfectly entited to spend money as the parents see fit and too many dont listen to the parents and alienate them.

Yes. This is how ours works.
Charity accounts - shared with everyone who comes to the AGM /subscribes to our email list (very few people do)

Requests come from teachers and are vetted by the Head before coming to us.

Invitation to the committee meetings are open and we always publicise them. Only a few people come but anyone who does is welcome to contribute and vote on what grant requests we fund

We probably should share more info about how we spend the money but we are all working full time and raising children plus battling health issues/volunteering for other things/caring for elderly relatives etc so we limp along doing the best we can with the hours we have and constantly encouraging others to join us. Noone judges those who only come occasionally - we totally get it. But of course those who volunteer regularly get to know each other well

Our PTA organises a Christmas dinner and has an Amazon wish list for decorations etc so parents can buy from it if they want to. I don’t want to be on the committee but am happy to buy something useful at a price that suits me. I think the neighbouring school do a lot more - trips to Alton towers, discos etc. I’m sure the funding is only as good as the PTA staff.

My DS is only in reception so haven’t had much experience but our PTA seem very nice. They struggle for volunteers because it’s only an infant school (not infant and juniors) so obviously everyone has very young kids.

For school fairs etc they have a really good system where you can sign up online for specific tasks with time slots. E.g. 2.30pm - 3pm set up stalls. 3-3.30pm cake stall etc.
So you can genuinely just sign up for one manageable task, rather than all or nothing.

It's a bit nonsensical. The only people they are raising money from really are parents. They have to jump through various loops to raise this money. Normally requires the parents to buy something, donate it, then buy tickets to try and win what they donated.

It would be so much easier and less stressful if you could make cash donations. Which I have donated heavily to with fundraisers. But there's still the passive aggressive disappointment when you can't help with events (even if you physically can't be there). That said, they do raise vital funds and an active PTA generally does indicate that there's some nice things happening.

But we aren't going to buy stuff the school don't need or want?
We do make suggestions to the head and we do sometimes veto requests but it is a partnership and we trust that the teaching staff know what the school needs.

All parents are invited to committee meetings. Very few ever come.
All parents have our email address and could message with suggestions. Very few ever do.

Guilt

People feel guilty that someone else takes on the work, time and commitment to try to improve all the kids environment, so it's easier to hate them than to recognise they can't be bothered. Most people in PTA have full time jobs.

There's also the fake-naive "they ignore me when I gave ideas and suggestions, they are so cliquey!" If you did give ideas AND your time AND a plan to manage said idea, I am sure they wouldn't reject you. Giving ideas and expecting others to do the work is rather silly 😂

Add the "but I give the PTA MY money, they should be bloody grateful!"
Except the money goes to.. YOUR child, the PTA has spent a lot more money and time than you have but carry on.

I don’t hate the PTA at all. They did a great job at my DD’s primary school and I’m grateful to the parents who volunteered to do what can often be a thankless task. I’m more annoyed about the limited government funding for schools that necessitates fundraising.

Our pta was fine, put in a lot of time and effort to raise funds to benefit our kids. They would send out a newsletter detailing how the money was spent and engaged with parents and the school for future suggestions.

I didn’t join as I had other commitments but always volunteered and they were perfectly pleasant to all of us making sure there was a rota for all of the jobs.

Not specific to our pta but what did piss me off was the over reliance on parents to fund extras, fine if you are in an affluent area but not so great for those who aren’t, creating a real them and us.