How would you spend $1,000?

How would you spend $1,000?
By Lynne Burns

The numbers tell a story:

         225 PTA members
X       $5 .00 membership dues
=       $1,125.00 total dues collected
-        $101.25 ($0.45 of each dues stays at the school)
=       $1,023.75 Money sent away to local, state and National PTA

Five dollars may not seem like a lot of money to join the PTA. But it adds up …
collectively, it’s over $1,000!!

How hard do you work to earn $1,000? For me, it’s a lot of money … a house
payment, two weeks of full-time work at $12/hour, a year’s worth of gas in my
car. I’m sure you can think of a lot of ways you would use $1,000. I’d like to see
all that money stay at our school.

Is Silver Mesa Elementary getting enough from the big dues we pay? We’re
sending OVER $1,000 of our kids’ school money away, to an outside group to
spend. Your child may or may not benefit directly from that money. With a PTO,
any dues collected would stay at our school, to benefit our kids.

The question remains: If a PTO can do everything we currently do as a PTA,
then why pay all those dues?