What I Learned Looking for PTA Officers and Parent Team Members That Changed How Kids See Leadership
I was wiping sticky cotton candy syrup off the folding snack table after the school fall festival last month, sneakers crunching on stray lollipop sticks and goldfish crackers, when I pulled out my phone to check the sign-up form we’d passed around all night. Zero new names for the two open officer roles: vice president and treasurer. We’d gotten one name for the bake sale team and one for yearbook photo sorting, and that was it. I texted the current president, Sarah, my bad news, and leaned against my car while the sun dipped below the playground fence. This was the third time we’d put out the call in six weeks, after emails to all parents and a table at back-to-school night. I’d started to wonder if we’d just have to shut down the PTA altogether, let the admin handle all the extra events that make this small school feel like a community.
I started noticing a pattern in the people who turned us down. A dad at soccer practice laughed and told me no, he didn’t have time, and anyway, last time he volunteered for something he ended up doing all the work for eight other people who bailed. A mom at parent-teacher conferences told me she’d love to help, but between her full-time job and her kid’s therapy appointments, she couldn’t commit to a two-hour monthly meeting. Then I overheard that same mom telling her 10-year-old son, who’d mentioned thinking about running for student council, “Honey, that’s just extra stress you don’t need. You already have homework and hockey, why add that on?”
That clicked. I’d been so focused on filling empty roles that I didn’t see how we – all of us adults – were talking about these leadership and team spots, and how our kids were listening. My own 12-year-old, Lila, had come home last spring saying she didn’t want to run for homeroom representative, because all the kids thought anyone who ran was just trying to get on the teacher’s good side. “It’s not cool to volunteer for stuff,” she’d said. “It just means you have extra work and no fun.”
I’d always thought that attitude came from middle school awkwardness, but it didn’t take long to see where it started. For decades, we’ve framed volunteer leadership roles as a chore that someone has to do, a sacrifice you make for the kids. We start every ask with “this is a lot of work, but we really need you.” We lump all the work into one big “officer” role with a fancy title, so if you can’t commit to 10 hours a month, you can’t help at all. And we only ever ask adults, so kids never get a chance to try small bits of leadership without running for a whole big position.
So I messed around with how we asked for people, and what we asked for. First, I took the two open officer roles and split them into five smaller, specific, time-bound team spots. Instead of “we need a treasurer,” the listing became: “We need one person to reconcile the bank statement once a quarter (takes 2 hours, you can do it from your couch), one person to send reminder emails about event payments (takes 30 minutes a month), and we still need someone to sign off on big purchases, which is 1-2 decisions a month.” I did the same with the vice president role, splitting it into event planning and outreach, each cut into small chunks. Then, I added a section for student team members: we needed 3 kids from 4th through 6th grade to help with graphic design for flyers, count snack at events, and collect feedback from other kids about what events they actually wanted.
I shared the updated list in the parent newsletter and hung a printed copy by the school office, and I didn’t lead with “we need help” or “this is a lot of work.” I led with what you get out of it: “Help us pick what events we host this year, see a project you worked on get used by the whole school, pick up small skills that don’t require a big time commitment.”
Within a week, we had all five spots filled. A full-time graphic designer who can’t make monthly meetings took the outreach graphic design spot – she’s a parent, and she does one flyer a month in an hour between meetings. A retired teacher who doesn’t want to plan big events took the bank reconciliation spot. And we got two 5th graders: Javi, who runs a neighborhood pet-sitting business and wanted practice making social media posts, and Mia, who wanted to help plan the spring dance she’s been talking about since last year. It’s not the traditional PTA board structure we had 10 years ago, but it works. We don’t have one person doing all the work, we have five people each doing a small thing they actually have time for.
This isn’t just about getting enough people to run the book fair. What’s stuck with me is how this changes what kids learn. When we tell kids leadership is only for people who can give 10 hours a month and have a fancy title, they check out before they even try. When we split roles into small bits and let them contribute what they can, they learn that being on a team isn’t a punishment or a resume line. It’s just doing a small thing that helps everyone. Even if you only have an hour a month to give, that’s still useful, and you don’t have to take on the whole thing to be a valued part of the group.
We still have gaps, honestly. We’re still looking for someone to help with weekly set-up for the school store, and we’ve had a few people drop out last minute when work got busy. But last week, Lila came home and asked if she could be on the decoration team for the spring dance. “It’s just three afternoons of cutting out paper flowers, right?” she said. “That doesn’t sound bad.” That’s more than I thought we’d get a few months ago, when I was standing in the parking lot wondering if we’d have to shut everything down. It’s not perfect, it’s not the formal structure everyone expects, but it’s working, one small open spot at a time.
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