We Did PTA Once... Once

Earlier this week I received a call on my cell phone, work phone, and home phone from the president of the PTA at my son's new school. Normally neither my wife or I are joiners but in the case we felt compelled to take an active part in our son's school. As I rushed home with the kids in the minivan from daycare and Tae Kwon Do, I couldn't help but think this had worst decision of the week written all over it.

We arrived promptly at 6:10 PM for our 6:20 PM meeting, signed in and paid $6 to join for the year. We received our voting card and a gift card for a free box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Things were looking pretty good at this point and I was excited to get started. At 6:40 the president stepped up to the podium and introduced herself. She quickly turned over the meeting to her vice-president because she said she wasn't a good public speaker. Little did she realize, neither was the vice president.

At this point the fake Oreo's and grape flavored punch had started to kick in for both the kids and they were ready to leave. We began by going through the agenda for the nights meeting, 6 copies of which had been passed out to the crowd of 3 dozen. The vice-president explained that they had never had a group this big so they hadn't prepared enough copies. Instead of having an LCD projector to show us the agenda or writing the agenda on the whiteboard the vice-president muttered through each point.

The only thing I did hear was that the meeting was going to end at 7 PM which meant that no matter how much worse this got, there was going to be an end.

The first item on the agenda was to vote on a budget. The issue was that the budget was two printed pages and all 6 copies had been handed out to along with the 6 agendas. 15 minutes later the vice-president finished reading the budget.

At 7:10 PM, I was ready to run to Radio Shack and buy a bullhorn so I could hear what the vice-president was saying.

At 7:20 PM, I was ready to offer a course on effective meetings to the PTA executive committee.

At 7:30 PM, I was ready to leave.

At 7:40 PM, I had lost the will to live.

Finally, mercifully the meeting ended. For some reason people clapped (most likely because they all wanted to leave as badly as I did). On the way out, my wife asked which committees we should sign up for. As she angled towards the sign up sheets I was looking for the secretary to ask her to remove our name from the call list. It's not that I don't want to be involved in my son's schooling, I just have no time for poorly run meetings.

Good luck PTA!