Dads knock down stereotypes about leaders of the PTA

Joenathan Barnes wanted to stay involved with his two sons' educations. They'd been home-schooled for years, and he wanted to be around when they switched to public school.

So Barnes joined the PTA at the boys' new school, Oscar Smith Middle. He liked it so much, he eventually became president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Oscar Smith High.

Chris McCullough has a different story.

He became PTSA president at Salem High School two years ago. When he missed a meeting while on a business trip, his wife volunteered him for the job.

Luis Tamayo wound up as president of the Creekside Elementary PTA after his wife nominated him - "sort of as a joke," she says. T here were no other nominees.

Thus, the trio became part of a small group in Hampton Roads: male PTA and PTSA presidents.

"I would not have gotten involved in this at all had it not been for a missed meeting," McCullough said.

No, this isn't the 1950s. Plenty of women work and

plenty of dads stay home. But the PTA still seems to be the domain of women - a place where Y chromosomes fear to tread.

"You know, ' It's for the wife, the PTA,' " Barnes said of the organization's image. " 'It's just a bunch of women getting together.' "

Almost every one of the approximately 200 schools in South Hampton Roads has a PTA. Exactly how many have male presidents is hard to determine. But if Chesapeake and Virginia Beach are typical, it's just a handful.

Six of Chesapeake's 45 schools had male PTA presidents during the past school year, a school spokesman said. Virginia Beach had 81 PTAs, with three to five male presidents, said Felicia Bailey, president of the Virginia Beach Council of PTAs.

At the state and national levels, the PTA is an advocacy organization, but at the local level, PTAs function mainly as fundraising arms that support programs and projects. Salem High School's PTSA, for example, threw an all-night graduation party for the seniors, to minimize the chances that students would be drinking and driving.

There's an aspect of the PTA that is true to stereotype, men involved say: Meetings can run long due to socializing. Sometimes lengthy - and occasionally impassioned - discussions go on, McCullough said, about such things as "whether we should get the red shirts with the black letters, or whether we should get the black shirts with the red letters."

B eing involved also gives men a way to support their children's schools, get to know their teachers and administrators, and meet people they otherwise wouldn't - even if it also means having to absorb an occasional wisecrack or two from a male buddy.

Founded in 1897, the PTA was then called the National Congress of Mothers. In a time when women did not have the right to vote, its founders - three women - believed that mothers needed a voice in discussions about political issues involving children.

The group's first president was a woman: Mrs. Frederic Schoff, elected in 1902. And they've been women ever since - until last weekend.

Charles Saylors became the head of the national PTA on Sunday. He's a vice president at a construction management company who said he hopes his election "will be a light-bulb moment" for other men who want to join the PTA. His presidency comes a year after the national PTA appointed its first-ever male CEO.

"It's been a mom-dominated organization," Saylors said. "That's the way it's always been... and that's not a bad thing. But what I'm hoping will happen is, men will see the role that I have," and reconsider.

When Barnes became PTSA president at Oscar Smith High, one of his goals was to recruit male s. He pushed dad-friendly activities such as the chain crew, in which male PTA members would help football officials measure first downs.

They had a great time, he said, but didn't attract new male members.

"We pushed hard at membership drives and stuff like that, but I just couldn't get through," he said. "Quite frankly, the only time you would see men is when they'd have an open house night."

Tamayo's PTA, at Creekside Elementary, has two men on the executive board, He's been experimenting with ways to involve more men - and more people in general.

He's cut meetings from two hours to 30 minutes, and he's tweaked some of the standard PTA phrasing: "chairpersons" are now "lead persons," because "chairing something sounds like it involves a lot of volunteer work."

It's been a good experience, he said, although more work than he - or his wife, who nominated him - expected.

So was his wife involved in the PTA last year?

She was "a member," Tamayo said. "A nonparticipating member."

This fall, he's assigned her to fundraising.

Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com