Our school has asked the PTO to purchase gifts for volunteer appreciation week. The cost would be about $200. Do you think this is something we should fund? Because most of the volunteers are the PTO members, I feel like we are paying for our own gifts.

Does seem kind of silly to go to the organization that coordinates the volunteers to have them pay for their own gifts, but many groups do it because the leaders feel it's important to give a little thank you to those parents and others who have given of their time. At the elementary where my children attended the principal and teachers coordinated a little volunteer party. They served refreshments provided by the staff and usually had some little thing that the students put together as a gift. I still have a handmade bookmark I got one year!

When is volunteer appreciation week? I have never heard of it.

Thanks

I come from an elementary school where the school put on a beautiful breakfast just for the volunteers each year.

Now at this middle school the school's idea of volunteer appreciation is to give out certificates to volunteers at the school's academic awards assembly. The PTA has to purchase the cake and provide the volunteers to serve.

Some volunteer appreciation, huh? Yet the volunteers are constantly being asked to do this, do that in appreciation of staff.

One of many reasons why I will not continue to be the volunteer chairperson for this PTA any longer...

That certainly is your choice to make, but the only ones to ultimately suffer from your decision will be the children. It seems to me that you ought to reconsider what your primary motivation is for being involved at the school: to be lauded or to make a difference for the students. You have to decide if your desire to be thanked in the way you want to be thanked is actually more important than the benefits you can provide the school as part of the PTA.

For me, there's no question that I'm in it for the kids and not for personal acclamation.

It seems to me that you ought to reconsider what your primary motivation is for being involved at the school: to be lauded or to make a difference for the students. You have to decide if your desire to be thanked in the way you want to be thanked is actually more important than the benefits you can provide the school as part of the PTA.

For me, there's no question that I'm in it for the kids and not for personal acclamation. I'm not the one who needs to be thanked -- it's the parent volunteers. If a school can't show its appreciation to the parent volunteers, it's missing the point. I am SO SICK of being asked to get volunteers for this thing and that (including plenty of staff appreciation events). How exactly is THAT "for the kids"? These people are PAID to do what they do.

This school has an agenda that doesn't include parental input. I thought I could make a difference. Now I see that I can't. They are on their own next year. There are plenty of other places to make a difference.

I'm not so sure it's always "for the kids." I think the school is more "for the staff."