The Life And Times Of A Frustrated PTO President

So you know that whole thing about me being the PTO pres?

Yeah, not a good idea.

I consider myself, overall, to be a rather optimistic person. The grass is always greener wherever I am, my cup is half full, etc, etc, but my brief time as the PTO pres has led me to believe that there are evil forces working against me and their name usually ends with ___________School District.

Who knew?

I spent most of yesterday (6.25 hours to be exact) working my way through the crazy world that is life within a school district. There are rules and regs at every turn, and just when you think you've made some progress, a new series of rules and regs jumps out and frankly scares the crud out of you.

My goal yesterday was to get T-shirt order forms copied and placed into every teacher's mailbox so they could go out today with the infamous "Wednesday Folder," a concept I believe in wholeheartedly but is one that is making me claw my own eyes out.

The task seemed simple enough but as one would expect, a few obstacles were thrown in my way.

First of all, our school houses the district's Spanish immersion program which is one that I am fascinated with and that two of my four children are currently enrolled in. I find it fantastic but that is neither here nor there. The obstacle it creates is that every flier that comes from our school must go home in English and Spanish as we have a ton of native Spanish speakers in our school. This would not be a difficult task if A) the district would allow us to use it's translation services or B) the district allowed us to us it's print shop services.

Because my grasp of the Spanish language ends with "pollo enchilada," (or is it enchillada a la pollo? See what I mean?) I am not much help in the translation department. Luckily, I am married to the tallest, whitest, Spanish-speaking gringo in the world, so this hasn't been too much of a problem. After several emails back and forth with him, I manage to get my order form translated. Muchos gracias.

Now I am left to copy. The PTO isn't allowed, under section VII, subparagraph II of the "Ways to Make Karen Hate Us Handbook" to make copies at the school. So I march mine and Austin's not-so-little fannies to Kinko's and get copying.

Ready for this?

1 1/2 hours and $173.82 later, I am finished. Apparently, 850 double-sided copies is literally worth it's weight in gold. I even had to pay to have them all cut apart, or else I firmly believe I would still be standing at Kinko's sliding my lime green fliers through the papercutter right. friggin. now.

After I had loaded everything back into the car, I set out for the school where the real fun began because those 850 fliers where arranged into two piles of 425, and I needed them in groups of 30 to go to the teachers. So I stood, with the help of my sweet friend Tracy, and counted to 30 approximately 274 times. Something like that.

And while I did that, my four children ran about the school as if they owned the place and I became THAT MOM. The one who has no control of her offspring and apparently doesn't know how babies get made.

As Tracy and I patiently counted away, a few teachers came through the lounge and remarked that it was a bit late to be getting them fliers if we wanted them in the Wednesday folders.

I quickly shot them the look of death, wiped the sweat from my brow, and carried on.

The good news is that when my two children returned from school today, I checked their folders and lo and behold, they did have a T-shirt order form in them! Hooray! Victory!

If I hadn't spent all my money at Kinko's, I could actually afford to get my kids some shirts too. (Not to worry, reimbursement pending...)

So my question now is, if it was this difficult just to get the order forms OUT, what will it be like when we start getting orders IN?