Last month, the New York City Council passed a bill requiring the Department of Education to publish by December 2019 an annual report on how much each parent-teacher association or parent association is raising. The bill requires the department to post the report on its website, deliver it to the council’s speaker and provide demographic information at each PTA’s school.
When Susan Moesker‘s son started sixth grade five years ago at BoerumHill School for International Studies in Brooklyn, there was no active PTA. The school, she said, “has a wonderful and diverse student body,” which Moeskerloved, but not all of the parents could afford to donate extra time and money to the school.
“We have families who have tremendous ability to give, and we have families who have no ability to give whatsoever,” she said.
So Moeskerand other parents who could banded together, and through bake sales and chili cook-offs, raised about $800 that first year. The group stayed active, grew an executive board and reported $6,585 in revenue in 2016, according to its latest tax return available on Guidestar. But while the momentum was upward, the receipts remained modest.
