PTO/PTA Horror (or Funny) Stories

Great story!

A good deed never goes unpunished lol. sorry

The worst part about serving on the pto board are all the people who are willing to share their opinions on how things *should* be run, but have zero intention of helping you actually do the work to get things done.

You don't like the way we allocated funds and you just spent 20 minutes telling me why you didn't like it and how it should have been done...when you could have spent just a few extra minutes, come to the meeting and shared your input there where it might have made a difference.

You complain that we had to pay a company to help set up one of the major fundraisers?? Trying volunteering to help with the set up and running of the silly thing and then we wouldn't have to pay someone else to do it.

The list goes on and on. Complain, don't do anything, complain some more. Drove me nuts.

Love that mom!

Oooh, I hope this thread will become horror stories from anyone else too. I love a good PTA horror story. lol. And MerryMom, I'm sorry that I'm chuckling at your story. I KNOW it was not funny at the time. 

I have a few, from my hundreds of years spent in the PTA. Oh wait, it wasn't 100? ugh...

1. Spring Fair day. My dh was PTA Treasurer. I was just an ordinary PTA volunteer, no official title at that time, unless it was Mrs. PTA Treasurer. At that time the procedure was to give every kid some free tickets, but then of course parents could buy more. We had several stations set up around the school -- at front and back doors, in the library, etc. to sell tickets. I was walking by one of them about mid-day (fair usually started around 10:00 a.m. or so) and the fair coordinator called me over. She reached into the bottom of the cash box and grabbed out a HUGE fist full of money! Not counted or organized or anything, so she had NO IDEA how much was in her hand. She said "Here, can you give this to P.? [my dh]" Then she reached in for another HUGE handful. Just handed me hundreds of dollars without counting it. o.m.g. I stuffed it into my fanny pack so I wouldn't get mugged between there and home. It's really a good thing that dh and I are both honest because we could have taken any amount from that and no one would have ever known. Dh put some new procedures in place almost immediately! 

2. Scholastic Book Fair - omg, I could write a book about this one. No pun intended.   Some standouts that I still remember all these years:
-- One year Scholastic made a mistake and included not only all the elementary books as usual but also several boxes of books that were clearly for older middle-early high school age. Themes not appropriate for younger kids. A couple volunteer parents just unloaded all the books and put them out on the shelves without really paying attention. Our librarian (who was FANTASTIC about everything, not just the book fair) always went through the books before the kids did, just to be sure that everything was appropriate for kids. So this time she pulled most of those books that were too mature for younger kids. One of the parents who had put them out saw that section missing, other stuff in its place, and raised a stink. "You're CENSORING books!!" *gasp!* *omg!* *etc!*   The librarian pointed out that each parent was responsible for their own child and if that parent wanted her kids to read any of those books she was welcome to buy them. But she (the librarian) did not want the 2nd grader who could read at a 6th grade level picking up something inappropriate. The librarian won of course. And that parent would have been the first down at the school complaining if HER 2nd grader came home with a book that she didn't approve of.

-- The parents (definitely more than one of these over the years I did the book fair) who were irate that their snowflake couldn't buy a book with his/her class on the day that class came to shop. And why was that you might ask? Oh yeah, it could be because the parent didn't send in any money with the kid. A parent who had been reminded at least twice, had seen the order form come home, and whose daily Starbucks money could buy many books. And a parent who would most likely be shopping during the evening hours. But her child was "embarrassed" not to be able to buy a book with the class. ugh.

-- The parent volunteer who got angry at me for this: A 1st grade class was visiting the fair. A little girl came up to me with "Rufferella". She had heard the librarian read this to them and had her heart set on buy it. She handed me a handful of crumbled $1.00 bills and assorted change. I counted it and before my brain could engage my mouth said "oh I'm sorry, you didn't bring enough money." dumb, dumb. She was short $1.00 and something. She stood there and her eyes gradually filled with tears. omg, I made a cute 1st grader cry! Also, she was one of our second-language kids which meant her family probably did not have a lot of spare change laying around. As soon as my brain kicked in I said "oh wait, let me count again, sometimes I'm bad at adding up money." So I counted again and lo and behold there was enough there.  I still remember her smile. The parent told me that I was "setting a bad example" and "they'll all think they can just come with less money than they owe."    I told that as far as that little girl was concerned I had miscounted the first time. And reminded her that the point of the book fair was to get books to kids. And, if she didn't like it to please go report me to the librarian. 


3. The two parents who EVERY SINGLE YEAR organized a huge Thanksgiving feast for the K-1 kids. Then one year the health department got wind of it and said that bringing in cooked poultry from outside wasn't legal. (not sure if it applied to other foods also, but the turkeys were their main point.) That year these two women did it anyway! Then got mad when they couldn't get enough volunteers to help organize it. 


4. The impossibility of getting people to volunteer help. We had a lot of good folks helping, of course. But, as someone already mentioned, lots more had suggestions but no plans to help. My favorite was the year the two ladies from my [HASH]3 above quit running the school picture day. They quit about three weeks before Picture Day, because they were mad about the Thanksgiving feast. Three weeks! So a friend of mine and I stepped in to do it. I mean, it's not hard, you basically just do what the photographer wants, and schedule the classes. So we did that for two years, but then got sick of it and moved to running the book fair which was more fun. 

So when we decided not to do it for the following year we sent a notice home saying that and asking for someone to step up. No one did. We sent a second notice. No takers. The principal put it in her weekly newsletter. No one offered. So finally, with the principal's blessing we sent home a notice that said: "Dear Parents -- We know how much you love getting your child's school picture taken. And we know that they make lovely gifts for grandparents. Therefore we regret to inform you that there will be no school pictures next year because we are stepping down and no one has come forward who is willing to do this job. Thank you for two good years. K and L."  --- hehehehe.  And yes of course someone stepped up. But why is it all about pulling teeth?! 


Okay, so I did write a book. I have many many more of these. I met some wonderful people through PTA, and in fact my partner in school pictures and book fair is still a close friend. But... by the time dd got to around 2nd or 3rd grade (ds was already gone from elementary) I had had it. I quit everything and told the classroom teacher that I was available for anything they might need, to please just let me know. But I was done with PTA stuff. I stuck to my guns too. The one time I relented was to help at the middle school book fair (but NOT be in charge of it!), and contribute to the International Potluck held in the middle school at Thanksgiving. This was a school with something like 28 countries represented so the food was excellent. See, just give me books and food and I'm good to go. Too bad a nice glass of wine wasn't allowed on school property. lol.

I came in here expecting hilarities and frustrations about paid days off as well...lol.

I've been PTO VP & Pres & a room mom. My terms ended in May, and I am DONE! I'm done with the drama that was worse than high school, college and 2 years of living in a sorority house with 70 girls combined. I have told the new officers that I will continue doing Box Tops till the Nov deadline and that's it. At our transition meeting the new Pres kept asking me who is in charge of spirit wear, teacher appreciation, fundraising, this, that and the other. I kept saying I was or one of the other 3 officers. She was stunned. I'm not sure how since she'd actually been at every meeting and should have heard us begging for someone to do something! But it's all on her now. All the ideas that she kept suggesting and we kept denying because the principal either didn't approve or we didn't have the volunteers are mysteriously not on the calendar as she promised they would be with her in charge

I ran the book fair for several years when my kids were at primary school. I remember one year we had a problem with one particular book that was hugely popular. We sold out of the stock we had, and took orders and payment for many more. Turned out Scholastic couldn't supply us with any extra copies of this particular book, so we had to issue refunds. The only problem was we had already banked all the takings so we had to write cheques instead.
One parent was furious with me because her cheque was for £4.99 when her son had given us a £5 note, and hadn't got his penny change. (We used to run out of pennies quite quickly so we would have a box of sweets that the kids could choose from instead.) I explained that I could only refund her the actual cost of the book. After a loud and pointless monologue complaining about how we had cheated her, she marched off. If I'd had a penny on me I would have given it to her just to shut her up!

So many stories-I could write a book, but this was my very first PTA nightmare:

My first PTA job was co-chair of the pre-school station at our school carnival. The carnival is not a big deal at all. It's just a fun night out for kids and parents. The PTA had been doing the exact same things for years and the kids loved it. The carnival chair advised me and my co-chair that our station was a gymnastics obstacle course. The obstacle course had been donated years' ago. We just needed to set it up and hand out prizes when kids finished the obstacle course. The prizes, which were temporary tattoos, would be provided to us by the PTA a few hours before the event.

My co-chair came to me and said "I'd like to do more than just give out tattoos. This is an Olympics year. A local party store sells these really cool plastic medals on ribbons. We need $50 worth of medals for the carnival. I've already called the chair and she said there is no money in the budget for the medals. We can't ask the store to donate, because they are already donating other stuff. We would have to pay for the medals ourselves.

I said "I think the kids will be really happy w/ the tattoos, but if you have your heart set on the medals, then we can just split the cost of the medals."

She looked at me and said "I can't afford to pay one-half the cost of those medals."

I said "I think we had better stick w/ the tattoos then."

She said "But I've really got my heart set on the medals. Don't you think we could do a fund raiser to try and earn the money for the medals?"

I said I didn't have time to do a fund raiser, and I thought the kids would be happy with tattoos.

This woman would not give up!

She knocked on my door a few days later and said "I've raised the additional $25! I asked my dentist to donate the $25."

After telling her she shouldn't be out raising money in the name of the PTA w/out the board's permission, I handed over $25 to her so she could go buy those precious plastic medals.

The day before the carnival I called her and said "We can start setting up for the carnival at 3:30. I've arranged to take off work and rounded up some volunteers to help."

She said "I wasn't planning on coming to the carnival or helping you set up. I'm going out of town."

I said "What???"

Then, I kid you not, she said "I see my contribution to the carnival as coming up with the idea for the medals and finding a way to purchase them. I think I've done more than my share and you can handle the rest."

Thank goodness a lot of other preschool mothers stepped up to help. The younger kids did like the medals, but they didn't understand the Olympic connection since the carnival was held months before the Olympics. The older kids didn't want the plastic medals, they wanted tattoos.

This was the first of many wacky experiences with the PTA. Most people were great to work with, but there were some wackoos too.

That's really sad. We actually call ourselves the PTL.  And yes, I'm the president.  And a room mom.  I work my butt off at that school, but I enjoy it.  I like being involved where my children go to school.  That said, we do have a volunteer or pay system.  It was to encourage people to volunteer more.  There are some that just have no interest and pay the $200 per term.  We even prorate it, so it's not like it is an all or nothing type thing.  We cashed our largest amount of parent volunteer hour cheques in June.  Our school population is growing as well, but still.  You would think that means more help.  But no.  I can think of 10 moms off the top of my head right this moment I can text/FB or email and they will get something done for me.  I'm having a heck of a time finding class moms for all the rooms too.

Best paragraph from this whole thread. It bears repeating. A friend of mine who is a counselor told me once that one of the things she tries to teach clients, more than anything else, is "no is a complete sentence."