* PTA membership is compised of ALL parents, guardians, families and stakeholders of children attending Calahan --- is how we defined ours

Good question!

We define membership as 1) any parent or legal guardian of a child attending the school, and 2) any paid employee of the school (including full- or part-time teachers, the Admin, the janitorial staff, et. al.). Members are allowed to attend and vote at any meeting.

We also have dues, and these also go to the classrooms in the form of teacher allocations, but we don't keep track on a class-by-class basis - all teachers get the same allocation.

We charge 2 levels of membership which also translates to 2 levels of benefits. Regular memebers pay $10/family and get reduced admission tickets to 2 of the major social events of the year - 1 in Fall and the other in the Spring. Gold memberships cost $30/family, but they get free admission to the same events.

If the benefits listed in the thread above don't get 'em, sometimes a financial benefit will

CC, sorry for not getting back with you sooner.

What is the incentive to pay the dues if everyone is a member and everyone gets a vote? I mean besides the direct impact of enhancing their child's classroom (bonus!).

Other than raising the money for their child's teacher, being listed as a member, being asked to help with special projects, etc. Maybe that's not much, but it works for us. The rule that everybody gets to vote is not a spoken/written one, just something that we've always had. Thankfully, (knocking on wood) we've never had any problems with this. That's not to say we won't, our paid members are usually the same ones and only about 1/3 of the school population. Out of those, there are only about 12 or so that attend meetings regularly. We do get plenty of help for our fundraisers so it works out most of the time.

Hope that information helps.

My last group didn't charge dues. Voting privileges are reserved for board members: President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Two Teacher Reps and Recognized Committee Chairmen. All other parents, guardians and staff are general members who are more than welcome (encouraged even) to attend meetings and participate in discussions.

Participation in activities, events and fundraising are optional but we always have plenty of support because the benefits directly impact everyone's children.

We get a lot of "I'll do anything, just don't ask me to come to meetings!" so this system works for us. It's not the only way, maybe not even the best way for many groups, but it's always worked for us.

[ 08-19-2006, 02:30 PM: Message edited by: CrewChief ]

For those of you that have no dues...do you then require participation in fundraising, or is that optional too?

Isn't it a bit unfair to give voting rights to people who don't contribute financially, via any means? In other words, a person who spends time fundraising for the school has an equal voice to someone who chooses not to?

No dues and voting rights to all, however to run for a position you must attend 3/4 of the meetings and events.