Mellower, I aspire to write as eloquently as you do.
For me, from now on when I see negativity coming out of one of Daron's rants, I am no longer going to respond. Maybe if we quit responding, he will quit posting negative rants.
No offense here......but this might be the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. The point is this......regardless of whatever you call your little group, your a group of parents or family members who love your child(ren) who attend that school and you and everyone else involved do it based on that alone. If you are that much of a trouble stirring type person in your group.....it might just be time to move on.
I don't mean to sound so anti-PTA, however PTA has left a bad taste in the mouths of many at our school. Long story short, our crazy county PTA pres. lives 2 doors down from our school and makes our lives a living hell!
We do more for our children than any other school in the town. In fact parents from other school in town have told us they wished their kids came to our school. We try to give the kids all we can.
For some wierd reason this angers our county PTA pres. She doesn't like that we offer so much to our kids and our families. She frowns upon some of the programs we bring in, even though the families love them.
She's very bitter at the fact that we can't get 100% membership. It's because people in our school have said that they don't support the PTA views on politics and there for will not pay PTA dues. We understand and don't hold it against them and we still welcome them to all of our programs. This also angers the county pres. in fact she passed a very nasty comment about it at one of our programs and a lot of parents heard this and now refuse to pay dues.
We've had 2 schools in town change from PTA to PTO and they have no problems. The PTO parents talk to our parents and now we have an overwhelming amount of parents that want us to change.
I'm sure there are some really great PTA's out there but unfortunatley we haven't seen or heard about them.Our parents have heard about how great PTO is how they can bring in great programs without being yelled at. And best of all they don't have a crazy lady coming in and causing all sorts of problems for them!
We are a PTO , our school use to be PTA but that was disbanded four years ago.I know that PTA does alot of Lobbying and political things , Im not quite sure what it is all for so I wont pretend I do know. I know that with PTA that you give them money, again Im not sure why or how much.
I do have to say that In my three years of running our PTO I have gone to the PTA site ALOT. I have to say that I have found alot of very valuable information on that site as well as this site. There is a assessment(schools of excellence in parent involvement) that you can give your school that covers everything from community to volunteering. It is a wonderful tool, because of that tool we have had our district parent compact rewritten, a new policy on involvement and are kicking off a brand new volunteer program.
I admit I dont understand the PTA but I think we also need to admit that there are alot of good things that have come from them.
Bottom line each school makes their own choice, what is best for them.We make those choices based on our communities. For example we found that asking our parents to pay dues just didnt sit well. Bottom line also is that the kids are why we do it...we may do it different ways but thats what it's all about. I love this site , I love the PTA site and will continue to learn from both groups=)
"When you stop learning you stop growing."
This is a very touchy subject. Our school happens to be a PTA thats looking to turn into a PTO. We feel that PTA has a lot to offer but has lost its focus.
PTA is supposed to be backing childrens interests not backing politics. PTA needs to stop spending our money on backing one political party over the other and put it back into supporting programs for our children. Nowhere on this site have I seen PTO supporting one political party over the other. This site,from what I can see, is all about helping our children and schools develope and grow and to support each other. Maybe PTA should do the same.
