She really can't. But what she might be saying is that there are some things that are more important to her than others, and she wants to make sure you try to get those covered. So if you've got limited parent involvement and you want to run a school carnival the week after she wants a float for a parade, so you know you won't have enough volunteers to cover both events, she might want you to ditch the carnival to get people to focus on the parade. So it's a matter of making sure you are both on the same page with what the priorities are.
Or, is it possible that she didn't find out that there were no volunteers for the float until the last minute? If this is something she committed to, and she saw you making efforts to get volunteers, but didn't find out until 2 days before that there wasn't anyone, she might be miffed about that.
If neither of those two situations applies, maybe you need to suggest that she get more involved in recruiting for volunteers--rather than having a request come out from the PTO's volunteer coordinator, the request comes directly as an email from her, for example. Having the principal directly request volunteers for an event in some way might be more powerful, and then if people still don't sign up, she can't just blame you for it.
- mum24kids
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