PTA donations - does your school suggest an amount?

>>The original poster made it sound like it was more of a benefit of the parent:

It is both. (benefit to parent and socialization for kids)

Luckily, right now I'm working from home, my wife has to go into the office 3-4 times a week.
I'm normally online for work at 8am, and I log off around 1:30am (my counterpart logs on at 6am and off at 10pm, but I also constantly get emails from her at 3:30am)
Wife leaves at 7:45am (and drops off kids) and gets home around 7-8pm then she is online for work until midnight

I have a ton of conference calls during the day (hence no work gets done until night time thats why I'm online so late)

Once the kids come home its very tough because we're in a one bedroom apartment. They're jumping around, arguing with each other and making a lot of noise. (Im sure the noise can be heard on my calls)

But the big issue is - picking them up at the normal time means leaving the apartment at 2:30 then we get home and I shower them and get them a snack, etc...so I can't look at my computer again until around 3:30/4pm which isn't good that I'm always disappearing from work. (and have to constantly turn down meeting invites for those times which I'm sure looks bad)

If they go to after school I dont have to disappear at 2:30pm, I can disappear at 4:45pm which looks better.

If it wasn't so expensive, we would have them there more often.

Message edited 10/14/2021 6:50:34 PM.

Re: PTA donations - does your school suggest an amount?

PTA donations - does your school suggest an amount?

We also work insane hours and it’s the same thing- calls all day so the work has to be done at night. DH is working right now. I frequently have meetings past 5 and after school ends at 6 so we’re often in the same situation.

The world requires we work like we don’t have kids and parent like we don’t work.

My advice- assuming you can afford it, pay for the after school. Your sanity is worth way more than $6k a year you’ll pay for after school.

Re: PTA donations - does your school suggest an amount?

That's crazy. All I was asked for was $25 to cover class gifts.