The PTA.Wait!

Don't Go! Don't doze off. Don't storm out.

Keep reading. You're safe. You're not at a PTA meeting.

But there's more to the PTA than excruciating boredom on a school night, and that's why I showed up at Blattman Elementary on a cold December morning.

To most of us, the PTA is notorious for two things - focusing on mind-numbing minutiae and suckering you into showing up by using your own kid - singing or acting - to bait you. It's really more like kidnapping since your kid's cuteness is being used to hold you hostage.

The PTA fesses up to both, but with an asterisk.

PTA actions, by charter and school rules, require approval of a quorum of parents, says Donna Smith, president of the Northside ISD Council of PTAs, and that's defined as a minimum of 20 parents.

Hence, the kidnapping of your time.

"If you don't have an event," she admits, "you'd have a hard time getting 20 people to show up."

But the stuff they do - trivial to you - is important. Given budget cuts and the restrictions put on any money that actually makes it from your wallet through the legislature to your local school, PTA decisions have impact.

"It's like running a small business," she says, "and a lot less than a bunch of housewives sitting around spending dues on buying stuff."

Like most active PTA types, Smith got into it by being a room parent. That evolved into more and more involvement, and ultimately, running a PTA.

"We're interested in the general welfare of all kids," Smith says, "and we do what we can to accomplish that."

A PTA has an executive board meeting and a general meeting. The general meeting is what most of us try to avoid. The executive board does the heavy lifting.

Someone's got to do it, however, and at Blattman, on Loop 1604 between NW Military Drive and West Bitters Road, that someone consists of 12 nice people huddled around a conference table at 8 a.m. waiting for me to show up.

President Amy Hudson runs a tight ship. She scheduled an hour-long meeting and, by gosh, she was finished in 50 minutes after her board buzz-sawed its way through a 20-item agenda, sipping coffee and smiling the whole time.

Every other organization in the world could learn from this.

The members found money - from a PTA fund and a money-raising event - to buy an iPad to help Principal Cara Adermann expedite teacher evaluations. They moved the date of a general informational meeting about the math curriculum to accommodate a meeting on STAAR testing. They reallocated a few hundred bucks to help with after-school enrichment programs.

All of that requires approval by hostages, er, parents, at the general meeting. But the board did it in less than 10 minutes.

Then, in quick succession, they voted to buy presents for Christmas pageant teachers; plotted a holiday brunch for the faculty; and approved certificates for bike rodeo winners.

It wasn't all business. The group had a good laugh about complaints, from some parents and kids, that the recent bike rodeo was fixed.

"Perception," said one attendee dryly, "is reality."

Plans to buy Christmas presents for 58 kids at other schools were going well, said Adopt-A-Bear Chair Amanda Owens. More than half of the pledges were in place after only two days. Another board member said he'd pick up any slack if pledges fell through.

Another whirlwind of reports and updates - box-top gathering, restaurant donation nights and next year's big Bear Bash fundraiser - followed.

Hudson and the group were in the zone.


"Clicking away," said Tara Blastick in a triumph of brevity over bloviation.

Career Day?

"It was great," Hudson said. The big hit was the dad who talked about skin grafts. "It was really gross, and the kids thought that it was really cool."

New business?


And with that, it was over.

