Kma,
I live in your town and boy do I know what you're going through. My heart goes out to you. As long as the County PTA Pres. is the County PTA Pres. she will make life for you very hard! Look at what happened at the other middle school when they tried to switch over to PTO. The police had to be called in, there was all sorts of fighting going on.
Just remeber one important fact, WE DID get our playground and you will get yours (I'll help you as much as you need me to)Come September things will be different with your PTA. Out with the bad and in with the good! Now, if we can get rid of the County Pres. and all switch over to PTO's life would be so much better!
What turned our school off about PTA was when we were raising money for the playground, they (The County) told us that they would come down on us if we gave the money in for a playground. They told us it's against the PTA rules and when we questioned them about it(because we never found the rule in the by-laws) they treated us as outcasts at all county run meeting and events. We were the talk of the county and to boot, the president lives down the street from the school. She has to look at our playground on a daily basis! Isn't life funny?
Tim--it's not verboten in Jersey for a PTA to donate monies to a school, but it's strongly discouraged. I never quite got this with our PTA, because I'm pretty sure they donate $100/teacher at the beginning of the year for classroom expenses. It's a Jersey thing; it was explained to me by our pres that because Jersey is such a litigious state, they wanted to distance themselves especially from playgrounds since there had been problems there. That's why I said I could have taken it to a higher authority, but didn't want to deal with the hassle. A PTA could donate monies for a playground, but depending on which county they're in they could find it a real uphill battle. Michelle hit it with the "should" and "shall" clauses. It's not law, but the process could be made very difficult for you.
To be honest, the information I received about the Jersey PTAs' involvement comes from the officers of my PTA board, and from the NJ PTA website. I never really pushed it further once the PowersThatBe made it pefectly clear they did NOT want to be involved in any activities our group had suggested. We could have taken it to higher authorities and insisted on doing it through the PTA, but after we sat and analyzed the pros/cons, we decided to take the route we did.
Like I said before, we could have made a lot of noise and fought for PTA involvement and support, but to be honest, the time and aggravation factors associated with that route were things we didn't want to take on. I suppose morally it would have been the "right" path to take, but we felt to force people to do something they didn't want to do would have turned "wanting to build a new playground" into a massive power struggle with a lot of negative fallout. We could have won that battle, but created a much larger war. We've managed to garner support from the right places, and things are (knock wood) actually going smoothly now. I hope "trying hard" has had success as well!
Hi mom, if this was bylaws the key would be should vs shall. (and in the policy, they use should)
Should means that it is recommended, but in terms of bylaws, shall means mandatory. (As far as that can be taken) Like I've said before... keep the faith. You know what I mean!
[ 02-16-2004, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: Michelle B ]
