Parents Associations - how do they work, what is their prime purp

[wysiwyg]

Did the PA President sit on the school Council? When they talk about the PA being a conduit into school Council for raising issues and suggestions (not individual child stuff more general), but not fundraising - did it generally work like that or does stuff go straight to school council? I get the impression that people think the PA can't do anything but fundraise (and the school/parents are great at that) so people don't see any value.

My experience with starting the school last year was so rubbish, I vowed that I would endeavor to change for future parents. Some things have been addressed after raising concerns directly with principal, but to me that seems a strange way of dealing with issues - I would have thought funneling through the PA would result in better more thought through solutions and less work for the principal - but perhaps it just doesn't work that way. Isn't part of the PA about feedback and ideas from the parent community?

Hope all going well Astrid.

[trishalishous]

Ours is also fundraising and so forth.

Id join but the president used to run our playgroup, and that ended badly

[Chocaholic]

At Catholic Schools they are called the Parents & Friends (P&F) Association while State Schools are P&C's, at least in QLD.

I am the Treasurer of our P&F and it is difficult to get enough parents committed to coming to the monthly meetings. We have 4 people on the P&F (President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary). We only have another 3 parents who turn up regularly to the meetings who had all held positions in the P&F in the past. It does seem to be the same parents who commit every year. We work closely with the Executive Committee at the school. In our case, that is the Principal and two Deputy Principals who attend every meeting.

Basically we are the fundraising arm of the school. Without the P&F, no fundraising can be done and all of the costs must be borne by the school usually funded via school fees. We do fundraising such as Rides Days, markets, sausage sizzles, family photo days etc. The money collected goes directly back to the school via buying iPads for every classroom, touch screen interactive whiteboards in every classroom etc. Our last donation to the school was to help fund the refurbishment of the play area for the Grades 2 to 4. The P&F donated $110,000 so the school could organise a smaller loan to fund the rest of the works. This amount took a few years to accumulate. Our next project is the play area for the Grades 5 and 6 plus the school façade.

[Astrid]

Did the PA President sit on the school Council? When they talk about the PA being a conduit into school Council for raising issues and suggestions (not individual child stuff more general), but not fundraising - did it generally work like that or does stuff go straight to school council? I get the impression that people think the PA can't do anything but fundraise (and the school/parents are great at that) so people don't see any value.

My experience with starting the school last year was so rubbish, I vowed that I would endeavor to change for future parents. Some things have been addressed after raising concerns directly with principal, but to me that seems a strange way of dealing with issues - I would have thought funneling through the PA would result in better more thought through solutions and less work for the principal - but perhaps it just doesn't work that way. Isn't part of the PA about feedback and ideas from the parent community?
.

The current President did not sit on school council, but a number of council members were part of the P&F sub committee. It was a requirement that all sub committees had at least one member of council.

There were multiple committees, one which was not a standard committee, but will be recommended to other schools, was the Building our school community committee. That would be more the committee for working on how families integrate into the school. I know we worked on flyers, feedback to teachers about our own experiences and how things could be improved and what worked. We also worked on a parents area and were generally concerned with the wellbeing of students and families.