Originally posted by <All 4 the kids>:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Thank you for the information. I'd forgotten about the PTA lobbying efforts.
Oh right, that evil lobbying like getting Parent involvement written into the NCLB!
And federal funding for IDEA
or how about the school lunch program?
</font>[/QUOTE]You're missing the point here. No one (at least here) is saying that the lobbying is evil or even bad-spirited. Just that -- for some groups -- lobbying itself (no matter what's being lobbied for) isn't a fit for their local parent group work.
An innocuous example: PTA has a position and lobbies against (I believe) Daylight Savings Time. The stated reason is because it negatively affects kids' sleeping. Noble reason.
But I imagine that there are people at a lot of schools who support Daylight Savings Time. A lot of local leaders would rather not have that kind of dispute (which has nothing to do with the goals of their local parent group), affect their recruiting and involvement and community-building efforts.
It's not saying that the PTA's positions are wrong; it's saying that the existence of positions in general is not what their groups is all about.
To me they're two equally laudable ways to run a parent group.
One's not bashing PTA if one prefers to run a parent group without that stuff. One's just doing it differently than PTA. Big difference.
Tim