Where a PTA does not exist

Does the school that your child attend have a duly organized Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)? I have a daughter in fourth year high school, she has been studying in the same school since the sixth grade and, in all those years, no PTA existed or was organized.

Contrary to what some people think, organizing a PTA is not the responsibility of the parents. It is the school that is required by law to organize it. Article 77 of the Child and Youth Welfare Code provides that “Every elementary and secondary school shall organize a parent-teacher association” and the word “shall” clearly makes it mandatory rather than discretionary. The school cannot claim that it has asked parents if they want one and, if those asked are not interested, then there is no reason to comply with the requirement.

In a way, I understand when parents do not show interest in joining the PTA. It eats up time while it doesn’t serve any real value. An uncle once served as President of the PTA in the grade school where his daughters (my cousins), and my brother and I all went to and the PTA was really nothing more than a social thing where parents organized parties and outings.

But there is a reason why the law mandates that elementary and high schools organize PTAs. While it is undeniable that a private school is a business venture, it is a business imbued with public interest and, therefore subject to state regulation.

And because the state recognizes that education is not simply made up of schools and their owners, but of students and their parents as well, the participation of parents in school concerns is an integral part of a democratic and transparent educational system.

This recognition is most visibly manifested in matters that relate to tuition fee increases. Section 10 of RA 6728 mandates that “In any proposed increase in the rate of tuition fee, there shall be appropriate consultations conducted by the school administration with the duly organized parents and teachers associations and faculty associations with respect to secondary schools…”

If, therefore, any particular PTA serves little else except to provide a forum where parents can socialize, then, it is the fault of the parents and no one else’s.

The problem, however, is not as simple as it may seem. First, with its vast administrative powers and the influence it wields, a school can surreptitiously organize a PTA that is totally under its control, quietly supporting the nomination of parents who will never raise a voice against the school. In labor law, the equivalent would be management created unions which the law prohibits.

Second, I know many parents (with kids in other schools) who choose to become active in the PTA to ingratiate themselves with the school administration. In a culture where “sipsipan” (sucking-up) is endemic, it is not surprising. In some cases, therefore, even when they appear to be legitimate, PTAs actually serve as an extension of the school administration, a tool to further control the school community without opposition from parents and students.

When I was in high school, the same PTA President was re-elected year after year although she did little except to glory in her title. In all those four years, she and her team failed to address basic issues like obligating the school to provide clean toilets for the students. Then, one day, the PTA President’s daughter had an accident. The wooden floors of a school building were so dilapidated that while walking on the corridor, the planks broke, the girl’s leg fell through up to her thigh, causing injury. Within two weeks, the wooden floors were replaced. The boys in class said it perfectly, “Ang lakas talaga ng mommy n’ya.”

Despite all that, there have been instances when PTAs have served as an effective grievance forum for parents who felt stifled by the high-handedness of the school in the implementation of policies. Vocal parents have raised valid issues during PTA meetings including complaints about particular members of the faculty and administrative staff.

Years after I graduated from elementary, I saw my old school on television. In Newswatch. In the video, the principal was being carried out of the office bodily by the police. Charged by the PTA with dipping her hands into the school’s coffers, she refused to allow an investigation and refused even more adamantly to abandon her post. She locked herself in her office where the police forced their way in. As she sat on her chair, the police took her, chair and all, and carried her out.

Ironically, the success of the PTA to serve as an effective democratic forum is the very reason why some schools are afraid to organize PTAs in the first place. As a rule, schools don’t like public discussions of controversies that place it, its faculty and its employees in a bad light. They prefer such issues to be threshed out in private in typical “areglo” style.

But this is 2010. Schools today aren’t, or shouldn’t be, dictatorial institutions where only one voice can be heard — that of the administration. Otherwise, a school would be a sickening and laughable parody of Roald Dahl’s Miss Trunchbull instead of the other way around.

And in a situation where there aren’t enough classrooms for all Filipino children of school age, and in a situation where there is a dearth in affordable private schools, the government cannot sit back and say that every parent is free to transfer his child to another school. If the government takes that attitude, then, all the declarations about educating our children would be nothing more than lip service.