Thanks so much for the support. Since the last time I wrote (fall) the situation has gotten worse. Very discouraging. These women are out of control!! two friends have moved their children to the Catholic school. Imagine that making your decision for you? It is fear and intimidation and they are on every single committee within all of the schools....our standards of excellance, our drug committee, every steering committee. they are not on the BOE, but resent the board and attempt to embarrass the board at every single meeting, it is just awful!! and the topics that they bring up at BOE meetings are always, always some sort of procedual issue, never about children or acedemics or athletics or personnel, always about some small little procedure rule that isn't being followed to the letter of the law as they see it. This month is was that the BOE minutes weren't available at the public library within the prescribed time. Imagine? I think if that is all you can complain about, its a good district!! thanks for the input and support.

"material goods that should be supplied by the BOE."

Would that really apply to a playground? I see that as meaning textbooks and such. A playground, in my opinion, is an extra. It's not something that a child needs for an education, but it's a fun place to hang out during recess. Granted, a lot of my education came from the time spent out on the playground! I think this problem may stem from interpretation of your bylaws and really needs to be addressed before breaking off and forming another group. If your PTA still stands by their interpretation, you could form a playground committee that dedicates itself to the goal of building one. :cool:

Thanks for the info! It never ceases to amaze me at the wealth of information available in this forum. We considered taking it further, but it seemed as though we'd be fighting a fight that even if we won, we lost. We felt it would only create a lot of animosity with the PTA board members, especially since it was obvious that none of them wanted to be involved with something they perceived as just too much work/hassle. Like I said, they are very selective in what they choose to do, even if other people offer to handle the whole thing, and prove that they can. My friend who is committee chair for health/safety is trying to get an escape school OKed, but it's not looking good. We're fairly organized at this point, we're just getting the 1023 info together(whee!), and then we're off to the races!

Originally posted by kmamom:
We originally went to the PTA board to form a committee for a new playground, but were told by the PTA pres and VP that the PTA bylaws (I'm assuming national, from what I've seen) strongly discourage using PTA funds for "material goods that should be supplied by the BOE."

I could be mistaken, but I'd almost guarantee you that this is not in the bylaws. I've read national and most state PTA bylaws and have never seen this. It's a common misconception.

It is a common -- and defensible -- *position* of many PTAers (and PTOers), but it's just that: an opinion or preference -- not a rule.

Your group is ruled by three things: 1) its bylaws; 2) state and federal law; 3) what you decide is best for your school.

As long as you're following 1 and 2, then you're free to make good decisions in #3. It's too bad that "fear" of upsetting the PTA powers-that-be is preventing you guys from doing great stuff.

Tim

That is pretty much standard PTA wording, more or less. In the ideal PTA world, yeah, you'd advocate the school system to get a playground. But let's face it--in times of budget cuts, are school systems going to fund playgrounds over cost of living increases for teachers? So you can advocate 'til you're blue in the face, but sometimes just raising the money through the PTA is a better option, and certainly not prohibited.

So yours is a problem of interpretation; I'm sure there are plenty of PTAs that have raised playground money. Your best bet might be to find some of those, so you can demonstrate to your Board that PTAs can and have funded them (try posting a message on the "playgrounds" forum of this site--might get better response there). And since you have issues with your County's President, might want to go to the state level and make some inquiries there about other PTAs in NY who have funded playgrounds.

We originally went to the PTA board to form a committee for a new playground, but were told by the PTA pres and VP that the PTA bylaws (I'm assuming national, from what I've seen) strongly discourage using PTA funds for "material goods that should be supplied by the BOE." In other words, the money we raise through the PTA is to maintain the running of the local PTA (mailing costs, paper, money to buy things for the Santa's Workshop, and non-fundraisers like Breakfast with Santa), and NOT for: textbooks, salaries of employees and the like(where I totally agree). Like I said either here or on another post, our PTA is fairly political, since the PTA President for our county is a resident of our town, and used to run our school's PTA, so the women on the board feel a particular sense of obeying by the rules. The board tends to be the self-made martyr type (partially to stay in control), and as a reult they're jaded and burned out (read "do NOT want to take on the work and aggravation of something untried and new). You are absolutely right, we are looking to be more supplemental, or more a non-profit association to handle the things the PTA can't. At first we had it in our heads to form an alternative to the PTA by forming a bona fide PTO, but after much thought we realize that the PTA has a very important role by doind what they do and offering some good programs to the children which aren't "material goods" but educational or aesthetic in nature. So rather than offer people an "us or them" situation, we hope to offer more "us in conjunction with them." The current PTA siutation in our school is dismal; and parent/student moral is low. It doesn't help that the board is quite cliquey, and refuses to hear new ideas unless one of them thinks of it, which isn't too often. Our PTA board members aren't nearly as well-adjusted as you are, and are incredibly[B/] threatened, and afraid of having to hear it from the county President. And even though they compete with about a thousand other fundraisers in our town(we're a "bedroom" of NYC, so the less affluent towns in our county tend to be crowded--our town is maybe 2 square miles and has four elementaries, 2 junior highs and a high school, each with a minimum[B/] of two classes/grade and each class has around 23-25 students) they see us as wanting to take the money from them. WOW. I DO tend to go on. Sorry!