I never had any issue with the parents who were putting time and effort into being part of the PTO getting some benefits. However, I would lose it if something had happened at our school like what happened in the school from the OP’s article.
The point of the PTO is to organize things which benefit all of the kids and all of the parents. The people who work for the PTO, putting their time and effort into these things do deserve some type of reward. Everybody else is a parent and deserves the same opportunities and consideration as every other parent. All parents are members of the PTO by default.
The benefit of being an active participant is that one gets to influence what’s going on in the PTO and which messages the PTO sends to the school board. Again, if there are additional minor benefits for active members (officers, members of active committees, etc), that’s OK. But paying for extra “privileges” makes it into an exclusive club.
Once the PTO becomes an exclusive club for paid members only, it is no longer a PTO. It’s “wealthy parents of XYZ school club”.
In my opinion, a community which takes organizations whose purpose are to benefit the community, and makes them into exclusive clubs for the most affluent, is toxic, to say the least.
Yep. I got to choose all of the music and dance related cultural enrichment activities that came to our elementary schools while I had kids there. It was a lot of fun…and we are pretty well connected with the arts community in our area…so not challenging to get people to come.
And in a PTO no parent ever SHOULD - it’s a completely inclusive, mutual benefit organization! Kids’ participation in a PTO event should NEVER EVER EVER depend on parents’ ability to “play”/pay - otherwise the school needs to “dis-associate”!
Absolutely not - one should not have to compete with the PTO, otherwise, that entire PTO is missing the mark.
We’re doing this for “the kiddies”, not adults “playing games” and running popularity contests among themselves!
Our PTA often secretly funded kids who could not afford to attend even very modestly priced events. The school knew who they were and took care of it. Absolutely agree that there shouldn’t be some sort of animal farm structure where some pigs are better than others.
Our area uses the Home-School Association model (HSA) instead of PTA/PTO. I think they differ slightly on a national level.
Please check out whether your district has an education foundation. These nonprofits are designed to support the public schools in many ways, above and beyond what tax dollars can do. They often award teacher grants for innovative new programs, sponsor weekend food bags for lower income students, pay for STEM supplies, or help with school supplies for students in need etc. I find them to be much more inclusive in how they help, than a school specific PTA/HSA
All the schools my kids attended were thrilled to have volunteers and never required payment to join a club. Work the Gala, work the concession stand, sell tickets, serve meals to the theater group before the play…all hands welcome. Really, I don’t remember being asked for money just to join the groups, never mind paying for an executive membership.
There was one family in the theater group that bought something like 20 tickets to each of the 3 performances in the very small theater, but the teacher was very good about making sure each performer got at least one ticket to one of the shows.
you know, we have Boys and Girls clubs here, and those kids benefit from the proceeds of the galas; but they certainly don’t go to them. That’s what this was - a special extra fundraiser for the school, not really a school event.
School events should be for all; cheap. It sounds like it was modeled after galas everywhere, right? they cost money, and sometimes tickets run out fast. But the proceeds certainly do benefit lots of people,
Pancake nights or pizza-guy nights at our old elementary school of 800 – were a blast! but not really money-makers. If they want to really fundraise, they’ve got to go big.
When it’s run by the PTO and explicitly invites elementary school children with their ONE special person… sorry, then it’s a “school event”, to the extent that any PTO/HSA events indirectly are.
If it actually had been a gala open first-come/first-serve to parents / town folks to BENEFIT the PTO or school system, then there would be no discussion. The entire article had been about how, at the end, CHILDREN were being left out! That’s where the difference lies.
Our schools realized that parents change from year to year, but the school’s values do not. So EVERYTHING the PTO/HSA wanted to do, had to be run by the principal to make sure it was in line with school values. I still can’t believe how this train-wreck made it past any sanity check.
I agree, fundraisers are for adults. Students have never been allowed to go to tricky trays, and events like the senior fashion show or cafe nights have students performing, but they are not attendees (cafe night always sells out quickly). I think PTO dues are maybe $15 per family per year, so really not a hardship.
One thing that has always driven me nuts were the non-volunteer parents who were always complaining about events. I was a bit of a slacker unless a friend was on a committee and asked for my help (although I did volunteer my husband as a chaperone for project graduation TWICE without his knowledge), so if I disagreed with anything I kept my mouth shut, whatever they wanted to put in the project graduation goody bags was fine with me.
Yes, in our case (an HSA), everyone became a member automatically, and there was a one-time membership fee at the beginning of each school year - but with the “able to pay” disclaimer.
I was not a slacker by any means. But I could not meet during the day. And for class parties, they knew they could count on me to bring in all of the paper goods and juice.
I volunteered at just about every PTO evening event. But so did most of my friends. We couldn’t do much during the day because most of us worked…but we were all in for weekend and evening things.
Where I worked, one of their biggest fundraisers was actually an annual childrens fair. It was for families…and it was terrific.
As a SAHM, I’m so glad all meeting having to do with school are at night here (except for some parent conferences but the night ones fill up much quicker, I was happy to take the day ones and be able to get several back to back ones). Our schools don’t even allow parent volunteers except class parents, who come in for a few class parties up until 4th, when they just drop off stuff for the parties and leave. Book fairs, pumpkin patches, holiday boutiques and such are the exceptions but they are run by the PTO’s.
About those “bring your one ‘special person’” school events - way back when ODD was in kindergarten (she’s in 11th grade now), the public school she attended had an event in the kindergarten classroom for Grandparents’ Day. The teacher said you were NOT allowed to be a parent or other relative or whatever…HAD to be a grandparent.
I begged and pleaded for an exception because that was the ONE time that my MIL (who lived in the area) was going to be out of town…could they please just make an exception so I could go instead? They said no. Then I said, “Fine, then ODD will be absent that day.” Why? Because she felt terrible about not having a grandparent there when literally everybody else would.
The teacher made an exception.
It was stupid.
The school she attended the next year onwards didn’t have any of that nonsense.
And any PTO that organizes a parent/child event too small to accommodate everyone , is beyond my comprehension.
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Pretend you are an officer at a PTO that wants to have an event like Ziti with your Sweetie. There is one venue where the owner, manager or someone else has a connection to your school. The owner will let you use one large banquet room or maybe all the places in a small restaurant which can seat 75 people ( because that’s the legal maximum) for free. The owner will donate the food, but wants the PTO to pay the wages of the wait staff for the duration of the party/and or a set service fee in lieu of a tip. So at this venue, you can only have 75 people, but you can charge $40 a head and $20 will go to the PTO which will use it for programming. PTO will raise $1500.
But more than 75 people want to come, so you go looking for a larger venue. You find one that can seat 150 people. However, the owner doesn’t have any connection with the school. The best he’ll do is give you a 10 per cent discount off the normal prix fix of $80 per person. So, the cost will be $72 per person and the PTO won’t make a cent. Because it will cost each child with one adult $164 rather than $80 fewer people want to come. The owner may set a minimum of 100 people to even get that 10% discount. When the event doesn’t hit 100, the PTO has to shell out an additional $8 for each person that did attend. The PTO loses money.
So, yes, the PTO chooses option one. Moreover, it takes the $1500 and uses it to buy books for the school library or to give each teacher in the school a gift card towards the cost of supplies at the beginning of the year or to pay for keyboards for the music class or…something else that the school simply won’t get without the fundraising.
For PTOs, it’s all about what we can get donated or what we can get at a steep discount. And yes, that sometimes means doing something that not everyone can participate in because the alternative is not to have the event at all or to charge more money for it.
And it also means that sometimes not everyone can afford some of the more expensive events. But these events may raise tens of thousands of dollars which benefit all of the kids in the school. At my grandkids’ public school the afterschool program is heavily subsidized by the PTO, for example.
In this hypothetical scenario, I would limit it to a school, a certain grade, or some other selector, so that no one from that group would be excluded.
Or, if that was not an option, we would brainstorm and think of a different event that would fit within the donated space/food options.
One thing would NEVER fly, is to ever organize any event that involves kids, where not every kid can be accommodated, e.g., only including kids where one parent can afford to sit at home (or an office desk) and monitor their personal mailbox to be able to hit the “buy” button within the first 25 minutes (probably used Ticketmaster )
If that hypothetical venue is connected to the school and so eager to “do good” they WOULD come up with a way to make something happen. Possibly stretched over two nights / two seatings, cater to the school gym, etc., even if it profits the PTO $500 LESS.
How we got around this, if space was limited, was to make it for one grade (assuming the next year the next grade would go). ‘Ziti with your Sweetie’ for 5th graders
The school in the OP has 679 students. there are 357 members of the PTO (assume families, not individuals) and some families have more than one kid. 300 people get to go to the event, so 150 kids and guest. I think parents must have known that tickets were limited and going to go fast. It’s also obvious that if only 26 of the tickets went in presale, the majority of members were willing to take their chances being in the lower membership tier.
Should the PTO never have an event unless all 679 students can attend, along with one or both parent? That doesn’t make sense. Even a school concert or play may not be able to have 1500 people attend.
My friend’s stepson went to a boy’s catholic school with about 250 graduating. For the graduation mass, each boy got two tickets. No one got more, even the big donors (and there were lots of those). Friend had a fit that it was unfair that she couldn’t go as she’d paid the tuition and mother had paid nothing for 4 years. True, but many kids had grandparents or stepparents who wanted to go and they set a hard rule. This was not graduation, just the mass. She called the priest who was a friend of hers. No. She tried some political connections. No. She had a very hard time accepting that she just couldn’t go. Stepson was thrilled as he didn’t like her and he had his parents all to himself.
For my kids’ hs graduation, each student got 10 tickets. I was very popular as I had 2 kids so got 20 tickets, and I only needed 5.
If there was a junior prom and a free venue was too small to allow every student to attend, then dropping some kids from junior prom would NEVER be an option.
Given that the performers are unpaid, our school scheduled as many nights as necessary to not have to exclude anyone. And the students were more than happy to have more than ONE run-through after practicing for it for months.
In fact, they even had a dress rehearsal where the senior center residents were invited with free tickets, giving back to the community-at-large.
A small business owner who is willing to donate the food for one night may balk at donating 2–and probably will. I don’t think such people are motivated by a general desire “to do good.” They view that donation as their contribution to the PTO for their kids’ school for the year. It’s not the same thing as the kids performing a concert or play more than once. (And BTW, at my neighborhood school, those extra performances wouldn’t be completely cost-free; the union contract requires that you use dept of ed janitors to open and close the school and pay overtime for them to do it outside of normal school hours.)
At some schools, doing the event for one grade might work. However, it only works if the business owner is willing to do the same thing year after year. Some are willing; others aren’t. But if Ziti With My Sweetie is something new and there’s no guarantee it will happen again, limiting it to one grade will probably make parents in other grades angry with the PTO unless EVERY grade has an equally popular event.
And you can think no big deal if the PTO makes $500 less. But that means cutting that amount from programming–so that might mean the music class can’t buy keyboards, so the kids don’t get to learn to play music or each teacher gets twenty five dollars less for supplies or something else has to get cut. If the PTO at your school supplies frills, it isn’t a big deal. But at a public school in a city, the PTO pays for a heck of a lot of things that are paid for by taxes in suburban schools.
I don’t agree with 2 tier memberships with PTOs. I just don’t have a problem with a fund raising event that because of the nature of the venue has to restrict the number of people who can attend. So if the event at the beginning of this thread had been strictly first come, first served, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Btw, PTA is a national organization and no association at a school can use that name unless it belongs to that organization. It requires minimum dues. They aren’t that much but they are more than $15. At the school which borders my grandkids’ public elementary there is a PTA, but not everyone belongs. If your kid qualifies for a free lunch, you can get a “donated” membership if another family pays for it. Otherwise, you can’t belong unless you pay to join and most of the poor families at the school don’t.
Schools with PTOs–including the one my grandkids’ attend–don’t charge dues at all. Every parent and guardian with a kid in the school is automatically a member. That precludes them from belonging to the national PTA organization.
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